The Essential James Joyce

by James Joyce, Harry Levin

This work includes excerpts from "A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man", "Dubliners" and "Exiles", and shorter extracts from his other works.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Poetry, Literature, Short Stories, Ireland, Collections

536 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1947

About the author

James Joyce was an Irish novelist, poet, and a pivotal figure in 20th-century modernist literature, renowned for his highly experimental approach to language and narrative structure, particularly his pioneering mastery and popularization of the stream-of-consciousness technique. Born into a middle-class Catholic family in the Rathgar suburb of Dublin in 1882, Joyce spent the majority of his adult life in self-imposed exile across continental Europe—living in Trieste, Zurich, and Paris—yet his entire, meticulous body of work remained obsessively and comprehensively focused on the minutiae of his native city, making Dublin both the meticulously detailed setting and a central, inescapable character in his literary universe. His work is consistently characterized by its technical complexity, rich literary allusion, intricate symbolism, and an unflinching examination of the spectrum of human consciousness. Joyce began his published career with Dubliners (1914), a collection of fifteen short stories offering a naturalistic, often stark, depiction of middle-class Irish life and the moral and spiritual paralysis he observed in its inhabitants, concluding each story with a moment of crucial, sudden self-understanding he termed an "epiphany." This collection was followed by the highly autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), a Bildungsroman that meticulously chronicled the intellectual and artistic awakening of its protagonist, Stephen Dedalus, who would become Joyce's recurring alter ego and intellectual stand-in throughout his major works.
His magnum opus, Ulysses (1922), is universally regarded as a landmark work of fiction that fundamentally revolutionized the novel form. It compressed the events of a single, ordinary day—June 16, 1904, a date now globally celebrated by literary enthusiasts as "Bloomsday"—into a sprawling, epic narrative that structurally and symbolically paralleled Homer's Odyssey, using a dazzling array of distinct styles and linguistic invention across its eighteen episodes to explore the lives of Leopold Bloom, his wife Molly Bloom, and Stephen Dedalus in hyper-minute detail. The novel's explicit content and innovative, challenging structure led to its initial banning for obscenity in the United States and the United Kingdom, turning Joyce into a cause célèbre for artistic freedom and the boundaries of literary expression. His final, most challenging work, Finnegans Wake (1939), pushed the boundaries of language and conventional narrative even further, employing a dense, dream-like prose filled with multilingual puns, invented portmanteau words, and layered allusions that continues to divide and challenge readers and scholars to this day. A dedicated polyglot who reportedly learned several languages, including Norwegian simply to read Ibsen in the original, Joyce approached the English language not as a fixed entity with rigid rules, but as a malleable medium capable of infinite reinvention and expression. His personal life was marked by an unwavering dedication to his literary craft, a complex, devoted relationship with his wife Nora Barnacle, and chronic, debilitating eye problems that necessitated numerous painful surgeries throughout his life, sometimes forcing him to write with crayons on large white paper. Despite these severe physical ailments and financial struggles, his singular literary vision remained sharp, focused, and profoundly revolutionary. Joyce passed away in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1941, shortly after undergoing one of his many eye operations. Today, he is widely regarded as perhaps the most significant and challenging writer of the 20th century. His immense, complex legacy is robustly maintained by global academic study and institutions such as the James Joyce Centre in Dublin, which ensures his complex, demanding, and utterly brilliant work endures, inviting new generations of readers to explore the very essence of what it means to be hum

Reviews

[M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Almost anyone who frequents a single used bookstore often enough to be familiar with the broad strokes of their inventory will probably agree with me, now that they come to think of it, that James Joyce (seconded only by Charles Dickens, probably) is one of the few authors whose books are always readily available in pristine, crisp, unmarked, unmolested, and, more to the point, unread condition. At Moe's Books here in Berkeley, California, not only do copies of his books abound in both the trade and pocket paperbacks, but also in the overstock above the shelves and the overflow that is stacked on carts in between the fiction aisles.

Joyce, like Dickens, is one of a laundry list of authors people are always intending to read, and therefore purchase with the best of intentions, but inevitably their new copies languish on the bookshelf for years, always the eventual summer read (*this time you'll finally read it, right!*) until it is sold, timidly, for cash or trade to the local used bookstore, the pages unread but still yellowed with age.

Well, that little observation aside...

Despite the fact that my brand new paperback copy literally fell apart in my hands more and more as I read (I eventually purchased an older, hardback edition to finish reading the excerpts from 'Ulysses' and 'Finnegan's Wake'), I've always loved The Viking Portable Library. Although in some cases they tend to include more "Life and Letters" material where more short works or excerpts would be my preference, they generally do a great job (the portable Cervantes, being a great case in point), and the portable James Joyce is no exception. I thought Harry Levin's Introduction and prefaces were barely informative, but given the fact that it includes 'Dubliners' and 'A Portrait of the Artist...' in full, and that most people will only read 'Ulysses' and 'Finnegan's Wake' in excerpted form anyway, this may the only Joyce book you'll ever want to own.

'Dubliners' is far and away the most accessible and consistently rewarding and enjoyable work here. I read the entire collection twice, but "Two Gallants", "Ivy Day...", "Grace", and "The Dead" are my favorites.

I first read 'A Portrait of the Artist...' when I was around sixteen and barely understood it. Now at twenty-four, I understand the plot more, but still found most of it tedious. Definitely read it if you haven't, though. Your "scene cred" depends on it!

'Exhiles' ends up failing as much as its preface prepares us to believe it will, but actually it's a neat dramatic premise. It could have been better if it wasn't mired in so much pseudo-poetic dialogue and melodramatic misery.

My bias is that I generally don't like poetry, so the collected poems were thankfully a swift read.

But in closing, since I haven't read either 'Ulysses' or 'Finnegan's Wake' in full, I'll just say this -- the excerpts of 'Ulysses' proved not nearly as unintelligible as I expected and encouraged me to read the novel in full. 'Finnegan's Wake' on the other hand, is every bit as unintelligible as I expected, but reading aloud makes them palatable, even fun, and while I really don't plan to read the novel, the excerpts were an experience at least.

[Sheryl · Rating 5 out of 5]

James Joyce
What more can I say? I would follow his words to the ends of heaven the rim of hell. I would lose many of them along the way and have to circle back and gather them stuffing them in pockets, braiding them into my hair, feeding a few to the magpies and dropping others in the path of the erudite hoping they might trip over them and become confused.
James Joyce.

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read Dubliners and the play Exiles, and the Collected Poems.
I saved A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and the extract from Finnegan's Wake for another day.

Ulysses was the first Joyce I'd read previously (and keep returning to), so didn't read the extract herein this collection.

This collection, 'A James Joyce Reader' would be a good place to start for a first sample of James Joyce.

[Ajit · Rating 4 out of 5]

People will hardly believe if I say I got this book from a roadside,half-bald-half-literate amature book vendor for Rs. 40! It is an old book and the front cover is already blown away; the pages have turned yellow and they need some extra care while turning them. Well, these issues hardly matter. What matters is this: the book is cheap and it is readable.

The introduction by Levin is informative but long. So I decided to skip it. I think I can appreciate it better after finishing the book. Hence, straight to Dubliners!

[Rosa Ramôa · Rating 4 out of 5]

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce,1882-1941,foi um escritor irlandês...

"A História é um pesadelo de que tento acordar".

"Ninguém presta à sua geração maior serviço do que aquele que, seja pela sua arte, seja pela sua existência, lhe proporciona a dádiva de uma certeza".

"Deus fez o alimento, o diabo acrescentou o tempero".

"Tudo é caro de mais quando não é necessário".

"Tudo é incerto neste mundo hediondo, mas não o amor de uma mãe".

"Vença-me. Seduza-me. Fique comigo. Ah, faça- me sofrer"!

[Chris brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an anthology that I read various stories from for different classes. I found out that Im not a huge fan of James Joyce.

[S Moss · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dubliners in this edition

Dead-ends in Dublin

Each portrait in Joyce’s Dubliners is of a person either trapped by the customs and social structure of Dublin (A Little Cloud, Clay, After the Race, Boarding House) or struggling with his (rarely her) imagination to visualize a more satisfactory life (Araby, Dead, Grace). In all cases the result is less than satisfactory, and several characters realize that leaving Dublin is essential to finding a different life (Eveline, A Little Cloud, Dead). However, a number have been so beaten down by their lives that they can no longer even visualize anything different (Counterparts) and may flee almost is terror if an alternative is offered (Eveline, A Painful Case). Interwoven in the stories is a comic awareness that Dubliners’ own choices create their problems which they are powerless to resolve, as in After the Race, Two Gallants, Ivy Day in the Committee Room and Dead. Joyce makes clear that a person without imagination, a willingness to cope with disorder and a thirst for adventure, especially abroad, will never escape the thralls of Dublin.

Melancholy colors most of these short stories, even when vigorous dialog by interesting characters engaged in daily events is the focus. There is a feeling that nothing substantial will change, that Irish traditions, beliefs and religion rigidly mold the characters’ lives and decisions. However Joyce’s ability to capture his characters’ native vitality and sense that life even in its narrow framework can be partially enjoyed makes his stories more than just sad tales. His male characters may not understand that their inclination to drunkenness is an evidence of their subliminal awareness of the unsatisfactory narrowness of their lives, just as the anger of his females may be directed at the men as the most obvious cause of their own limited lives. Rarely does a character realize the central role of the Catholic Church in creating this bubbling discontent, although it is humorously depicted by Joyce in “Grace” when his characters are eager to defend every incomprehensible Papal decision due to Papal infallibility, a concept that was strongly rejected by a German and an Irish cardinal when first proposed. In a final ironic twist, the Pope himself, to end the controversy, declares his infallibility, whereupon the German cardinal leaves the church, while the Irish cardinal immediately declares that, yes, the Pope is infallible, and he now agrees and accepts this doctrine.

In a nutshell, this is the problem of Joyce’s characters--their reason may know something isn’t reasonable, but their emotional response is to adjust themselves to the situation rather than working for any true change. In the sad case of the Irish martyrs for freedom from British rule, even their sacrifices can be swept aside by thoughts of the financial benefit from a visit by the English king. With his portraits of a broad selection of lower-class and aspiring middle-class Irish, Joyce finds the same limitations in all of them, as if their history had so conditioned them that no one could escape its influence as long as they lived in a country that continued to prize its tragic history as a model for behavior. In a sense this early version of the influence of history and myth upon a people is a foreshadowing of what Joyce will later do with the myth of Ulysses that underlies his great novel.

According to Harry Levin in his Preface to Dubliners, Joyce said the collection of stories is arranged as a “series of chapters in the moral history of his community, and the episodes are arranged in careful progression from childhood to maturity, broadening from private to public scope” (17) Indeed, the narrator in the early stories is either a young man or the focus is on juvenile experiences, starting with “Sisters” where the boy resents being called a child as he tries to understand the unorthodox position of his favorite Catholic priest. In a very short story Joyce encapsulates many complexities of youth: the role and meaning of religion, adult behavior and the longing for home as respite from worldly burdens. What Joyce called “epiphanies” is a good descriptor of each story that seems like a glimpse through a torn curtain into a world at a critical moment. The reader is allowed to see how the characters respond to a situation, and certain important details are given along with allusions to events outside the specific incident, which allow the reader’s mind to expand into undescribed parts of that world. Specific realistic details create a strong sense of the environment without the tedious catalogs of details that a lesser writer employs. In this way, with the reader more actively involved in the creation of the story’s environment, Joyce’s short story has more life and vitality.

In particular “Araby,” in very few words, captures a young boy’s adolescent longing for a neighborhood girl and his romantic attempt to delight her by attending a bazaar that she cannot visit. His hopes are dashed by his indifferent uncle who returns too late to give him money, so that the bazaar is closing when he arrives, and his dreams of regaling the girl with his exploits comes to nothing, as indeed do most of the dreams of Joyce’s Dubliners.

With elegant, incisive prose Joyce gives the reader insight into the impoverished lives of these simple working people. Apparently one reason the collection was originally rejected for publication was because characters could be linked to living Dubliners, but none of the stories seems like a simple naturalistic description of real people. Every portrait is sharpened to bring out an individual’s specific characteristics, mostly by brief descriptions of what the character does or says. Although there may be an ironic tinge to some of these descriptions of Irish behavior, there is little to no interior monolog or psychological explanation (except in The Dead, when the main character is modeled on Joyce himself); rather the reader must intuit the interior thoughts that result in specific acts.

The final short story, “The Dead,” focuses on the annual ball given by two elderly women who epitomize the Irish celebration of tradition, one of the chief causes for the inability of the Irish to accept change and modernization. Their annual Christmas celebration, with its tempting traditional foods, spirited singing and dancing, along with drinking (sometimes to excess), creates a comfortable feeling of conviviality and comradeship, which thinly veneers underlying antagonisms. One is that between the Catholic majority at the party and the lone Protestant, Mr. Browne, who behaves somewhat offensively (“He had assumed a very low Dublin accent so that the young ladies, with one instinct, received his speech in silence,” 199) and seems ignorant of Catholic practices (monks who sleep in their coffins), but nonetheless he is irrepressibly himself despite genteel expressions of Catholic distaste. Another is that caused by the Irish super-patriot, Molly Ivors, a fellow student of Gabriel Conroy (the main character in this story), who chides and mocks Gabriel (“She had tried to make him ridiculous before people, heckling him and staring at him with her rabbit’s eyes,” 207) because he favors traveling to the Continent and keeping up his “foreign languages” rather than going to the desolate Aran Islands and working on his Irish. “Well,” said Gabriel, “if it comes to that, you know, Irish is not my language” (205) ... “I’m sick of my own country, sick of it!” (206). However, this is an argument he cannot win, because underlying the belief that Irish traditions are as valuable as those of other countries is an Irish insecurity about these very traditions and an inability to discuss them in a rational manner.

Gabriel, who has attended these gatherings for many years, has reached a stage in his life when he is discovering the incongruity between his needs and those of his relatives. He wants to include in his after-dinner speech some sophisticated references to the poetry of Robert Browning, a Scottish poet, but upon reflection decides that these “two ignorant old women” (209), his aunts, and the rest of the gathering won’t appreciate such cultural remarks (“their grade of culture differed from him... They would think that he was airing his superior education. He would fail with them,” 195). Looking ridiculous, even if it means denying his own values and ideas, is to be avoided, as his mother “was very sensible of the dignity of family life” (203). In order for him to fit into the convivial atmosphere he opts instead to hypocritically praise Irish hospitality, even while slyly noting, “Some would say, perhaps, that with us it is rather a failing than anything to be boasted of” (220). The evening draws to its inevitable close, and despite its deficiencies, Gabriel feels an awakened tenderness toward his wife, whom he sees standing in a romantic attitude listening to a plaintive Irish melody. Walking to the carriage with her, “Moments of their secret life together burst like stars upon his memory” (231), and he begins to fantasize about his love for her, remembering one of his declarations of love as “Is it because there is no word tender enough to be your name?” (232). He revels in his possession of her, their “moments of ecstasy” (232) and his “arms were trembling with desire to seize her” (233), but he wants her to reciprocate that desire, “He must see some ardour in her eyes first. He longed to be master of her strange mood” (235). He fantasizes that “her thoughts had been running with his,” so he asks her, egoistically saying, “I think I know what is the matter” (236). When she reveals that she has been thinking about a young man from her youth, a tender pure love, who had come to say good-bye to her and stood in the rain although he was already ill with consumption, who wouldn’t go home “But he said he did not want to live” (240), Gabriel realizes that not only his public but also his private life is not authentic. “She had been comparing him in her mind with another. A shameful consciousness of his own person assailed him. He saw himself as a ludicrous figure, acting as a pennyboy for his aunts, a nervous, well-meaning sentimentalist, orating to vulgarians and idealising his own clownish lusts, the pitiable fatuous fellow” (238). He had never known such a love, had never known his wife nor even himself, and now he realizes that “His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. ...His own identity was fading out into a gray impalpable world: the solid world itself, which those dead had one time reared and lived in, was dissolving and dwindling” (242). The final image of the story is that of snow falling softly and deadeningly over all of Ireland, placing a cold blanket over the dead and the non-living. As a great storyteller, Joyce does not spell out for the reader what Gabriel will do next, but the implicit assumption is that he now realizes he must learn to live differently, which will only be outside of Ireland. There is no future for him in a country that has no present but only a past.

The world of Joyce’s Dublin is long gone, although it lives on in these insightful stories. Irish devotion to their traditions and culture still endures, but now, perhaps ironically, Joyce’s own visions of Ireland have become part of the cultural dialectic, opening that culture to a deeper understanding of itself and its values.

[Diane · Rating 4 out of 5]

This "portable" James Joyce is actually a bit of a handful. It is over 700 pages of select Joyce works, made to give a taste of this very popular Irish author. Detailed inside are selections from his short stories of The Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the play Exiles, Ulysses, Finnegan's Wake, and selected poems.

Joyce's work helped to springboard more modern literature where snippets of every day human life was the focus of the plot as opposed to some monstrous upheaval that sends main characters into a tizzy. The drama, Joyce would most likely argue if he was still with us, is in the every day. That concept carried on well after Joyce's death and the end of his career into modern literature of today. He also opened the door for stream of consciousness writing within fictional characters to help supplant raw emotions in his work, as seen in Ulysses.

The selected works are pretty conclusive, but I, personally, could have done without so much of Finnegan's Wake. If you're looking for just a snippet of Joyce, the rest would have done nicely, but Finnegan's Wake is simply too much work for the layman's reader. Written in brogue and in a series of ramblings, it is nigh on impossible to discern what is happening without careful detail and a slow deconstruction of the work. At which point, if that's your goal, you might as well just buy the whole of Finnegan's Wake instead of only just a section in this collection. All of his other works are easier to read and more apt to tickle the curious mind.

By no means an easy book to tote around, but definitely one for the shelves if you're curious about Irish nationalism as detailed through a careful examination of the every day, stream of consciousness writing, and of course the drama of a simple human life.

[Julio The Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

Of all the world's great writers James Joyce is the one least likely to be served well by a Portable edition, but that doesn't mean one shouldn't try. Taking a slice out of Joyce is like eating filet mignon by the spoonful. The great bites here are the magnificent short story collection, DUBLINERS, in full, and the complete first novel, PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN. Yet Joyce always insisted these were warm-ups to the great novel he would write someday. DUBLINERS, heavily influence by Ibsen, tested the bounds of both British censorship and Irish decorum. One simply did not use the world "bloody" in a story or write about Parnell's adultery. But, no serious reader will want to be without "The Dead", an appropriately haunting portrait of love lost and time never to be recaptured. PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST is Joyce himself at home and Jesuit school, struggling under the stifling heat of bourgeois and Catholic morality. Stephen Daedelus is ready to have the forge of life make him a man, ready for ULYSSES. Joyce's two collections of poetry, POEMS PENNY EACH and CHAMBER MUSIC, add little to his stature, while his only play, EXILES, is dreadfully overwritten. Which leaves selections from ULYSSES and FINNEGAN'S WAKE, both necessary and incomprehensible at the same time. ULYSSES is one day of life of one man and every man throughout history, and no excerpt can do justice to such ambition. The power of FINNEGAN'S WAKE lies in what Joyce called "the music of the words", not in what a selection may mean. Read the originals, in full.

[James Varney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Four stars for "Dubliners," which are super short stories. Coming back to "Portrait of the Artist" after many years I liked it much less the second time around. Still, "The Portable Joyce" strikes me as an excellent addition to any library, given it has those two books. For Joyce lovers obviously "Ulysses" is the star, and there are many excerpts here. It will give readers a good idea of what they will be tackling with "Ulysses."

The thing that astounded me about "Portrait" the second time around is that Joyce actually pulls his punch. I gather his expose of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland was scandalous in his time and his home country, but given what we've learned about what transpired in that Church it's remarkable to me that Joyce, for all his indictment, either didn't know or didn't want to go so far as to reveal what was happening with some of the acolytes and choir boys. In that sense, it seems somewhat hollow to me, But again, that's reading it after many decades, it's hard to say today what it must have seemed like to contemporary readers and Irish. And strictly from a reader's point of view, if you're not interested in a long indictment of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland then the novel begins to lose its appeal. The second time around I just got bored.

But "Dubliners" *is* great stuff.

[Joseph Patterson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought about reading Joyce for a long time, but the comments I've heard regarding how daunting it is to read Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake kept me away. This collection is a great introduction to Joyce and gives the beginner a fighting chance to glimpse the landscape around mountaintop he may have been writing from. Even in Dubliners, you get a full dose of his ability to construct a powerful linkage between a seemingly innocent image and the story described around that image. It makes me wonder if the image wrote the story or the story made the image. He enables an emergence of meaning instead of carting us around in it.

[Jo · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this book because I thought he was the guy who wrote "I think that I shall never see / A poem lovely as a tree."




My bad.



(Two stars instead of one, because Dubliners and Portrait expanded somewhat my small understanding of Irish national troubles.)

[Jerry Phillips · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ably titled, this is indeed a self contained library of Joyce's works. The Dubliners (complete), Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (complete), his collected poems, his play, Exiles, as well as selections from Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. Pretty damn good portable library!

[Alexander Curran · Rating 5 out of 5]

Useful guide.

[Big Hard Books & Classics · Rating 3 out of 5]

Includes his play "Exiles"

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

● 'Cakes for the dead. Dogbiscuits. Who ate them? Mourners coming out.'

[Matthew Harding · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well ain't that a bitch. It won't let me change my shelves.

Let's see. Wow. Joyce. Hmm.

Few can turn a phrase like him. I love the way he plays with words and the ideas of words, but I can't say much else.

I dig his poetry - when it's accessible, but I feel a lot is too personal to be universal, or perhaps just held onto by him.

I had little actual experience reading Joyce and so this seemed a good start. It sat around for a long while and I finally had nothing else on deck, but let's look at the specifics.

The Dubliners is fine if you like that sort of thing and easy to follow. I love short stories, but not being Catholic and not interested in a lot of his obsessions, I found it kind of unremarkable.

Moments of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man really appealed to me as did some phrases, but overall unremarkable viz. Dubliners.

Exiles is a yawner except for the section about the unnatural nature of forced human monogamy. The characters aren't even unlikable, just flat.

The poems have the most to offer and he should've been edited to do that more often as I find these small bites more intriguing. The vaguenss helps here.

Ulysses. Well. I don't think I need to read it after perusing these excerpts. Thanks for saving me the time.

And finally. Finnegan's Wake. No thank you! I liked it when Burgess did it, but Here Comes Everybody and Anna Livia Plurabelle are impenetrable and Tales of Shem and Shaun, nearly so, though the latter is closer to the mark as there is some semblance of logic in the connecting words.

Again, I love the way he turns a phrase, and I will take quotes from him, but read any more of his long works. I don't think so.

I just don't find him that interesting.

Sorry Jimmy.

[Suzie Sims-Fletcher]

I use this for performances: The Dedham James Joyce Ramble.

AND - Runners World interviewed me for an article coming out in the August issue (or, coming out in August...I don't know which) on the Ramble....it is an event where runners run and readers read. The guy who thought of it said: Joyce is as exhausting mentally as a road race is to read..and then decided to combine the two. It is a costumed (late Victorian) held in beautiful countryside and finishes at a Stately Country Home....with music and a picnic check it out!

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just picked up an old edition of this from '62. Damn those Viking books are durable, not like the crappy editions that are put out today. Also, unlike today's paperbacks, they actually fit in your pocket.

Now for the words: the complete Dubliners and POTAaaYM alone makes it worth having. The selections from Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake give you a taste (which honestly, is enough for me)of these works.

[Erin]

No doubt that Joyce was talented, but his writing is just not for me. I had to read parts of Ulysses, parts of The Dead, and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man for a class that I loved in college, but his writing for me is hard to interpret.

[Nicholas · Rating 4 out of 5]

First I have to say I would of rather of had the entire books of each that is in this collection; however, just to see his writing style and the opportunity to pick up on his use of words is quite rewarding. Also the picture he paints of the past days of Europe is nifty.

[Daniel]

The entire volume is introduced briefly (16 pages); each major work has a short preface as well. Not surprisingly, such brevity omits the many interpretations of Joyce's works, and much background material. But this is a good get-your-feet-wet volume...

[Monkeyinacoma · Rating 3 out of 5]

The stream of consciousness stuff is really hard to read and I didn't enjoy it at all but some of the other bits are good, I particularly liked the dubliners and some of the poetry (although you do have to read it in an Irish accent otherwise it doesn't rhyme).

[Whitney]

Hunter gave me this book so that I could read "The Dead" (I read Dubliners). The stories are beautiful. Character and landscape. An important predecessor to everything else I've read. I really enjoyed them, too.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first read this when I was at university, but I'm rereading Dubliners> again now.
BTW My edition, with this same ISBN and year of publication, says it's published by Triad/Panther, an imprint of Chatto, Bodley Head and Jonathan Cape Ltd.

[Nick Black · Rating 4 out of 5]

The only way I know of to get a bound copy of Exiles for less than a few hundred bucks.

[J · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good collection of his shorter works with snippets from the longer novels, though if you gonna read them, pony up and do it big, y'all!

[Madeline · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read: All of Dubliners and Portrait. Selections from Ulysses (Circe, Sirens, Hades, Penelope? Maybe). Some poetry.

[Becky Lu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Had to use this for a text in grad school. This is a lovely, portable selection on this writer's most popularly read selections!!

[Erika · Rating 5 out of 5]

very interesting.