First published in 1916, James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is his first novel. A Kunstlerroman, or artist’s novel it describes the life of Steven Dedalus from childbirth, through his schooling and finally to his full blossoming as an artist. Loosely based on the author’s life and ritten in a mix of third person and indirect speech, the novel served as a basis for Joyce’s more experimental novels Ulysses (1922) and Finnegan’s Wake (1939).
About the author
James Joyce (1882-1941) was an Irish novelist and poet. A contributor to the modernist avant-garde movement, he is regarded as one of the most influential and important authors of the twentieth century and is best known for Ulysses (1922), a novel that parallels Homer’s Odyssey using an array of literary styles.