James Augustine Joyce was born in Dublin on February 2, 1882, and was the oldest of ten surviving children of John Joyce and Mary Jane Murray.
At nine years old, James wrote his first poem, "Et Tu, Healy," in response to his father's anger and betrayal after the death of Charles Stewart Parnell.
In 1898, he enrolled at University College to study English, French, and Italian. While there, he became acquainted with the scholasticism of Thomas Aquinas, which had a strong influence on the rest of his life.
Joyce didn't find true fame until 1914 with the release of Dubliners. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was published in 1916, and Ulysses in 1922. Finnegans Wake, a stream-of-consciousness novel, came out in 1939 and was the last work published while he lived.
James Joyce passed on January 13, 1941, in Zurich, days away from his 59th birthday.
However, his works still hold sway over modern authors and artists because Joyce's fascination with the details of everyday life opened new possibilities for expression, and they are used across the art and literary world to this day.
We are reading from Chamber Music, his first collection of poetry published in 1907.
