James Joyce

James Augustine Joyce, the eldest surviving son of John Stanislaus Joyce and Mary Jane ('May') Joyce, was born in Dublin on 2 February 1882. He attended Clongowes Wood College, a Jesuit boys' school in County Kildare, until his father lost his job as a Rates Collector in 1891. Around the same time, Joyce took 'Aloysius' as his confirmation name. After a brief spell at the Christian Brothers School, all of the Joyce brothers entered Belvedere College, a Jesuit boys' day school; fortunately, the school fees were waived. In 1894, with the Joyces' finances dwindling further, the family moved house for the fourth time since Joyce's birth. They also sold off their last remaining Cork property. Despite increasing poverty and upheaval, Joyce managed to win a prize for his excellent exam results and wrote an essay on Ulysses which, arguably, sowed the seeds for Joyce's 1922 masterpiece of the same name. In 1896 Joyce was made prefect of the Sodality of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a devotional society. However, he was not as pure as he seemed; Joyce claimed to have begun his ‘sexual life’ later that year, at the age of fourteen.[1] Education In 1898, Joyce began studying modern languages at...