James Joyce - Dubliners - 1954-2003

1 "Dubliners" by James Joyce - The Modern Library Library, New York - 1954 first thus American edition - 14cmx12cm - condition: good, in original dustwrapper with minor wear in mylar cover, name to title page.

2 "Dubliners" by James Joyce, corrected text and contemporary photographs by Dr. Clarke - Folio Society, London - 2003 first thus edition - 20cmx15cm - condition: very good, all photographs present, in slipcase

Dubliners is a collection of fifteen short stories by James Joyce, written from 1904 to 1907.[2] First published in 1914, Dubliners presents a naturalistic depiction of Irish middle-class life in and around Dublin in the early twentieth century. The stories were written when Irish nationalism was at its peak, and a search for a national identity and purpose was raging; at a crossroads of history and culture, Ireland was jolted by various converging ideas and influences. Joyce felt Irish nationalism, like Catholicism and British rule of Ireland, was responsible for a collective paralysis—a theme permeating much of the work.[3] He conceived of Dubliners as a "nicely polished looking-glass"[4] held up to the Irish and a "first step towards [their] spiritual liberation".[5] Joyce's concept of epiphany[6] is exemplified in the moment a character experiences self-understanding or illumination. The first three stories in the collection are narrated by young boy protagonists; the subsequent stories are written in the third person and deal with the lives and concerns of progressively older people, in line with Joyce's division of the collection into "childhood, adolescence, maturity, and public life".[7] Many of the characters in Dubliners later appeared in minor roles in Joyce's novel Ulysses