The publisher’s promotional language is so striking, and so in keeping with the author’s sensibility, that it must be quoted in full: “If you know nothing about James Joyce but would like to, this is ...

Zachary Leader’s book on Richard Ellmann’s landmark work on James Joyce asks whether a biographer can be considered an artist. In 1927—just five years after the publication of Ulysses and five years ...

As a descendent of Irish ancestors, and a retired altar boy to boot, it was perhaps inevitable I would launch my college career with a seminar devoted to a single author, the Irish literary icon James ...

Richard Ellmann’s “James Joyce” is widely regarded as the greatest literary biography of the 20th century, much as some see Joyce’s novel “Ulysses,” published in 1922, as its supreme work of fiction. ...

Reenacting the Fall of Adam and Eve with his siblings, a young James Joyce played the part of the devil, “wriggling around on the floor with a long tail made of a rolled-up towel.” In her posthumous ...

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (born James Augusta Joyce; 2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and ...

Francine Prose reviews Edna O’Brien’s latest novel, “Girl,” in this week’s issue. In 2000, Robert Sullivan wrote about “James Joyce,” O’Brien’s biography of the avant-garde writer, for the Book Review ...

Ellmann’s Joyce: The Biography of a Masterpiece and Its Maker, by Zachary Leader (Belknap Press, 464 pp., $35) Literary biography as a genre has sometimes suffered a lack of respect. Writers ...

Anthony Uhlmann has in the past been funded for research on James Joyce and others by The Australian Research Council. Gabrielle Carey cast a distinctive shadow within Australian writing, one you miss ...