A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Bantam Classics)

Joyce, James

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0553214047 ISBN 13: 9780553214048

Publisher: Penguin Random House USA, 1980

Perhaps Joyce's most personal work, "A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man" depicts the intellectual awakening of one of literature's most memorable young heroes, Stephen Dedalus. Through a series of brilliant epiphanies that parallel the development of his own aesthetic consciousness, Joyce evokes Stephen's youth, from his impressionable years as the youngest student at the Clongowed Wood school to the deep religious conflict he experiences at a day school in Dublin, and finally to his college studies where he challenges the conventions of his upbringing and his understanding of faith and intellectual freedom. James Joyce's highly autobiographical novel was first published in the United States in 1916 to immediate acclaim. Ezra Pound accurately predicted that Joyce's book would "remain a permanent part of English literature, " while H.G. Wells dubbed it "by far the most important living and convincing picture that exists of an Irish Catholic upbringing."

A remarkably rich study of a developing young mind, "A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man" made an indelible mark on literature and confirmed Joyce's reputation as one of the world's greatest and lasting writers.

Review:

"A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is in fact the gestation of a soul." -Richard Ellmann

"One believes in Stephen Dedalus as one believes in few characters in fiction." -H. G. Wells

"[Mr. Joyce is] concerned at all costs to reveal the flickerings of that innermost flame which flashes its myriad message through the brain, he disregards with complete courage whatever seems to him adventitious, though it be probability or coherence or any other of the handrails to which we cling for support when we set our imaginations free." -Virginia Woolf

"[A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man will] remain a permanent part of English literature." -Ezra Pound

Book Description:

A highly autobiographical tale of the growth of a young man's mind, and his striving for independence.