James Joyce's disillusion with the publication of Dubliners in 1914 was the result of ten years battling with publishers, resisting their demands to remove swear words, real place names and much else, including two entire stories. Although only 24 when he signed his first publishing contract for the book, Joyce already knew its worth: to alter it in any way would 'retard the course of civilisation in Ireland'. Joyce's aim was to tell the truth -- to create a work of art that would reflect life in Ireland at the turn of the last century. By rejecting euphemism, he would reveal to the Irish the unromantic reality, the recognition of which would lead to the spiritual liberation of the country. Each of the fifteen stories offers a glimpse of the lives of ordinary Dubliners -- a death, an encounter, an opportunity not taken, a memory rekindled -- and collectively they paint a portrait of a nation. - Back cover.
Dubliners is a collection of vignettes of Dublin life at the end of the 19th Century written, by Joyce’s own admission, in a manner that captures some of the unhappiest moments of life. Some of the dominant themes include lost innocence, missed opportunities and an inability to escape one’s circumstances.
Joyce’s intention in writing Dubliners, in his own words, was to write a chapter of the moral history of his country, and he chose Dublin for the scene because that city seemed to him to be the centre of paralysis. He tried to present the stories under four different aspects: childhood, adolescence, maturity and public life.\
‘The Sisters’, ‘An Encounter’ and ‘Araby’ are stories from childhood. ‘Eveline’, ‘After the Race’, ‘Two Gallants’ and ‘The Boarding House’ are stories from adolescence. ‘A Little Cloud’, ‘Counterparts’, ‘Clay’ and ‘A Painful Case’ are all stories concerned with mature life. Stories from public life are ‘Ivy Day in the Committee Room’ and ‘A Mother and Grace’. ‘The Dead’ is the last story in the collection and probably Joyce’s greatest. It stands alone and, as the title would indicate, is concerned with death.
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Contains
[Sisters](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL15073389W/The_Sisters)\
[Encounter](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL15073256W)\
[Araby](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL20570121W)\
[Eveline](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL15073302W)\
[After the Race](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL18179262W)\
[Two Gallants](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL20570300W)\
[Boarding House](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL15073259W/The_Boarding_House)\
[Little Cloud](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL18179222W)\
[Counterparts](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL20570464W)\
[Clay](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL18179205W)\
[A Painful Case](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL5213767W)\
[Ivy Day In the Committee Room](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL20571820W)\
[Mother](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL18179244W)\
[Grace](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL15073323W)\
[Dead](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL15073437W/The_Dead)
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Also contained in:
- [Dubliners / Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL15073371W/Dubliners_Portrait_of_the_Artist_as_a_Young_Man)
- [Essential James Joyce](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL86338W/The_Essential_James_Joyce)
- [Portable James Joyce](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL86334W/The_Portable_James_Joyce)
Written over a seven-year period, from 1914 to 1921, this book has survived bowdlerization, legal action and controversy. The novel deals with the events of one day in Dublin, 16th June 1904, now known as "Bloomsday". The principal characters are Stephen Dedalus, Leopold Bloom and his wife Molly. Ulysses has been labelled dirty, blasphemous and unreadable. In a famous 1933 court decision, Judge John M. Woolsey declared it an emetic book-although he found it not quite obscene enough to disallow its importation into the United States-and Virginia Woolf was moved to decry James Joyce's "cloacal obsession". None of these descriptions, however, do the slightest justice to the novel. To this day it remains the modernist masterpiece, in which the author takes both Celtic lyricism and vulgarity to splendid extremes. It is funny, sorrowful, and even (in its own way) suspenseful. And despite the exegetical industry that has sprung up in the last 75 years, Ulysses is also a compulsively readable book.
Stephen Dedalus grows up in Dublin, feeling different from the other boys. His childhood and adolescence are shaped by bullying, his father's weaknesses and the growing realization that in order to make his way in the world he must reject a conventional life and boecome an artist.
Penguin Popular Classics are the perfect introduction to the world-famous Penguin Classics series — which encompasses the best books ever written, from Homer's Odyssey to Orwell's 1984 and everything in between.
