James Joyce

Clongowes 1888-1891 I James Joyce

James Joyce (1882-1941), writer, was a native of Dublin, who attended Clongowes in 1888-91. Sent to Clongowes at an early age – ‘half-past six’, as he said himself – he remained in the same class for three years. He had just moved up a grade, when his father’s poor financial situation seems to have led to his removal. His time in the school is vividly recalled in the first chapter of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916). Father Conmee, his rector in Clongowes, was influential in gaining him a place (without fees) in Belvedere, where he showed himself an outstandingly gifted student. He went on to University College, then also a Jesuit-run institution, where he took an undistinguished degree, while familiarising himself with modern European literature. After mixing for a time in Dublin literary and musical circles, in 1904 he eloped to the Continent with Nora Barnacle (whom he finally married in 1931), determined to succeed as a writer. His first publication was Chamber Music (1907), a small collection of poems. After a final visit in 1912, he never returned to Ireland, although he wrote about virtually nowhere else. He lived successively in Trieste, Zurich and Paris; he died and is buried in Zurich. His major works are Dubliners (1914), a collection of short stories, and three increasingly experimental novels, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), Ulysses (1922) and Finnegans Wake (1939). His only play, Exiles, was first performed in 1918 and Pomes Penyeach, a second collection of poems appeared in 1927. He is a major, highly influential figure in world literature – modernist, yet deeply imbued with the humanist principles he first encountered with the Jesuits. As he promised, he has ‘kept the professors busy’ ever since, inspiring thousands of critical analyses of his work. Time magazine has rated him amongst the twentieth century’s hundred most important people. He is easily the most famous Clongownian.