James Joyce (biography)

James Joyce
AuthorRichard Ellmann
LanguageEnglish
SubjectJames Joyce
GenreBiography
Publication date
1959
Publication placeUnited States

James Joyce is a biography of the Irish modernist James Joyce written by Richard Ellmann, which informs an understanding of this author's complex works. It was published in 1959 (a revised edition was released in 1982).

Reception

Anthony Burgess was so impressed with the biographer's work that he claimed it to be "the greatest literary biography of the century."[1][2] Edna O'Brien, the Irish novelist, remarked that "H. G. Wells said that Finnegans Wake was an immense riddle, and people find it too difficult to read. I have yet to meet anyone who has read and digested the whole of it—except perhaps my friend Richard Ellmann."[3] Ellmann quotes extensively from Finnegans Wake as epigraphs in his biography of Joyce.

References

  1. ^ Lorraine, Janzen Kooistra (Winter 1993). "The Biography of the Century: Another Look at Richard Ellmann's James Joyce". Biography. 16 (1): 31–45. doi:10.1353/bio.2010.0340. JSTOR 23539556. S2CID 162295867.
  2. ^ Menand, Louis, "Silence, Exile, Punning: James Joyce's chance encounters". The New Yorker, 2 July 2012, pp. 71–75.
  3. ^ Interview, The Art of Fiction No. 82, The Paris Review, Issue 92, Summer 1984.


Stub icon

This article about a biographical book on writers or poets is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.