Dubliners


Book Description

With an essay by J. I. M. Stewart. 'Every night as I gazed up at the window I said softly to myself the word paralysis. It had always sounded strangely in my ears ... But now it sounded to me like the name of some maleficent and sinful being. It filled me with fear, and yet I longed to be nearer to it and to look upon its deadly work' From a child grappling with the death of a fallen priest, to a young woman's dilemma over whether to elope to Argentina with her lover, to the dance party at which a man discovers just how little he really knows about his wife, these fifteen stories bring the gritty realism of existence in Joyce's native Dublin to life. With Dubliners, James Joyce reinvented the art of fiction, using a scrupulous, deadpan realism to convey truths that were at once blasphemous and sacramental. The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.




English Classics: Dubliners


Book Description

“And yet her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood.”




Dubliners


Book Description

Dubliners is a collection of picturesque short stories that paint a portrait of life in middle-class Dublin in the early 20th century. Joyce, a Dublin native, was careful to use actual locations and settings in the city, as well as language and slang in use at the time, to make the stories directly relatable to those who lived there. The collection had a rocky publication history, with the stories being initially rejected over eighteen times before being provisionally accepted by a publisher—then later rejected again, multiple times. It took Joyce nine years to finally see his stories in print, but not before seeing a printer burn all but one copy of the proofs. Today Dubliners survives as a rich example of not just literary excellence, but of what everyday life was like for average Dubliners in their day. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.




The Dead


Book Description

"The Dead is one of the twentieth century's most beautiful pieces of short literature. Taking his inspiration from a family gathering held every year on the Feast of the Epiphany, Joyce pens a story about a married couple attending a Christmas-season party at the house of the husband's two elderly aunts. A shocking confession made by the husband's wife toward the end of the story showcases the power of Joyce's greatest innovation: the epiphany, that moment when everything, for character and reader alike, is suddenly clear.




Girls in Their Married Bliss


Book Description

Kate and Baba are in London, playing out the tragicomedy of their married lives to its surprisingly level-headed conclusion. Kate, feeling trapped in her grey stone house with her increasingly cold husband, tearfully looks for her dreams of romance elsewhere. And when Eugene takes terrible, implacable revenge, she naturally turns to her brazen friend Baba for help. But Baba, the bored trophy wife of builder Frank, vulgarly flashing his wealth and ignorance to the world, has her own problems without Kate drooping self-pityingly over her. And both women find unsuspected qualities in themselves as they learn to face reality.




Chamber Music and Other Poems


Book Description

Universally known for his groundbreaking prose - especially for the monumental novel Ulysses and its depictions of Dublin at the turn of the twentieth century - James Joyce started off as a writer of lyrical poetry, a genre which he never abandoned in his lifetime and which informs and enriches the rest of his literary production. This volume, which includes Joyce's first published book, Chamber Music, as well as his later collection Pomes Penyeach and several other uncollected poems, reveals a lesser-known facet of the great modernist's artistic career and a glimpse into his poetical sensibility.




Selection from Dubliners+cd


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Ulysses


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Four Continents


Book Description

Henry Lawson, V. S. Naipaul, Nadine Gordimer and Chinua Achebe are respectively Australian, Caribbean, South African and Nigerian, yet they all write in English. The 'English' literature of the ex-colonies is proving to be the most interesting and innovative of our times: this volume offers a significant example of its vitality and originality. As Salman Rushdi said, 'the Empire writes back'.




A James Joyce Reader


Book Description

Contains the text of Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, together with the Collected Poems (including Chamber Music and Pomes Penyeach) and Joyce's only drama, Exiles. There are also episodes from Ulysses and Finnegans Wake.