Dubliners

Colophon Author: James Joyce Cover design: Grant Richards Desktop publishing: Lars Remer Printing: Pumbo BV Copyright © 2022 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. Printed in the Netherlands Dubliners depicts middle-class life in Dublin at the start of the twentieth century. Themes within the stories include the disappointments of childhood, the frustrations of adolescence, and the importance of adolescent awakening. James Joyce's disillusion with the publication of Dubliners in 1914 was the result of ten years of struggle with publishers, resisting literary innovation and their demands to remove inappropriate words, real place names and much else, including two entire stories. When James Joyce signed his first publishing contract for the book he already knew its literary worth and to alter it in any way would retard the course of civilisation in Ireland. James Joyce's aim was to tell the truth, to create a work of art that would reflect everyday life in Ireland at the turn of the last century and by rejecting euphemism, reveal to the Irish the unromantic reality the recognition of which would lead to the spiritual liberation of his country. Each of the fifteen stories offers a glimpse of the lives of ordinary Dubliners such as a death, an encounter, an opportunity not taken, a memory rekindled and collectively they paint a portrait of a nation. Considered at the time as a literary experiment, Dubliners contains moments of joy, fear, grief, love and loss, which combine to form one of the most complete depictions of a city ever written, and the stories remain as refreshingly original and surprising in this century as they did in the last.