TheJamesauthor Joyce James Joyce was born in Dublin on 2nd February 1882, into a lower-middle-class Catholic family, the eldest of ten children. After a brief period of prosperity, his family fell into poverty. Nevertheless, on account of his extraordinary potential, he was sent to prestigious Jesuit schools before going on to University College, Dublin, where he studied French, Italian and German language and literature, as well as English literature. In 1902, he graduated in modern languages and went to Paris with the intention of studying medicine, but a few months later he was called back to Dublin because of his mother s terminal illness. After her death in August 1903, he remained in Ireland for a year. During this period he wrote book reviews and took his first steps as a writer. The following year he met and fell in love with Nora Barnacle, a twenty-year-old chambermaid1 in a city hotel. Their first date was on 16th June 1904, a day which was to become famous thanks to Joyce s masterpiece Ulysses. In October 1904, the couple moved to the Continent and settled first in the Austro-Hungarian naval station of Pola, then in Trieste, also part of Austria-Hungary. They had two children Giorgio and Lucia but did not get married until 1931. The ten years spent in Trieste were difficult, filled with disappointment and financial problems. To support his family, Joyce taught English at the Berlitz School of Languages, gave private lessons and depended on gifts from friends. His most famous pupil in Trieste was the writer Italo Svevo, whose novels he greatly admired. Joyce s first published work, the volume of verse Chamber Music, appeared in 1907 and, after many delays and difficulties, Dubliners was published in 1914. Actually, this collection of short stories had been completed by 1907, but Joyce was soon in trouble with publishers on account of supposedly obscene elements in his prose. 1. chambermaid: a female worker whose job is to clean and tidy rooms. 8