James Joyce wrote most of the short stories in his landmark collection, Dubliners, when he was still in his 20s, but a tortuous publishing history, during which printers refused or pulped them for their profanity, meant they weren’t published until 1914, when Joyce was 33. In their eighth episode, Mark and Seamus discuss the astonishing confidence of Joyce’s early work, which not only launched his literary career, but also initiated the grand project of his writing life. In Dubliners, the reader experiences already the vastness of Joyce’s literary imagination, his harsh criticism of the Catholic Church, his shameless plundering of the lives of his contemporaries, and a writer’s self-conscious vocation to ‘forge the uncreated conscience of his race’.

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Stories discussed in this episode:

'The Sisters'

'Clay'

'Two Gallants'

'A Little Cloud'

'A Painful Case'

'Ivy Day in the Committee Room'

'The Dead'

Further reading in the LRB:

⁠John Bayley: Our Founder⁠

⁠Tim Parks: Joyce and Company⁠

⁠Roy Foster: tarry easty⁠

⁠Colm Tóibín: His Spittin' Image