Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
James Joyce
-
Standard Name: Joyce, James
Irish exile JJ
, hailed by Yeats
as a new kind of novelist even before his first novel was published, became one of the leading practitioners of modernism. As well as poems, a play, and a volume of short stories, he produced three important novels, from the last of which he put out several separate sections long before the whole appeared. Joyce encountered obstacles to publishing almost all his books, raised by censors both official and self-appointed. Without the tireless patronage of Harriet Shaw Weaver
and Sylvia Beach
, his last two books might never have been published at all.
Her parents named her after Anna Livia Plurabelle of Joyce
's Finnegans Wake, and after Julian of Norwich
, medieval anchoress and author of Revelations of Divine Love.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
Textual Production
Anna Livia
In this text Anna Livia
explores the growth and survival of lesbian identities and communities through the politics of gender, sexuality, class, and race. The narrative is set in contemparary South London and centres on...
Literary responses
Anna Livia
In American Book Review, John Jacob
commented that Minimax was a novel James Joyce
would have shown an interest in . . . [Anna Livia] has infused her writing with . . . inventiveness...
Textual Features
Diana Athill
Many aspects of this story are clearly close to the way DA
saw her own life, though characters are different (the protagonists' parents, for instance, are not her own). Sixteen-year-old Meg Bailey is shy, easily...
Friends, Associates
Djuna Barnes
DB
arrived in Paris with letters of introduction to Ezra Pound
and James Joyce
, and she soon came into contact with a great number of the US expatriates living there at this time, including...
Joyce
was launching a lawsuit against Samuel Roth
at this time for illegally pirating Ulysses in the United States. He stated in a deposition against Roth that the book was not his property but...
Wealth and Poverty
Sylvia Beach
Ironically, SB
was by then doing considerably better financially and physically without the entanglements of Joyce
's affairs and the business with Ulysses.
Fitch, Noel Riley. Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation: A History of Literary Paris in the Twenties and Thirties. W. W. Norton.
329-30
Leisure and Society
Sylvia Beach
Hemingway
was scheduled to read alone but was frightfully anxious, so he asked Stephen Spender
, whom he had met in Spain, to come along and read too. Hemingway was still nervous on the...
Occupation
Sylvia Beach
SB
offered to publish James Joyce
's Ulysses, a proposition he gratefully accepted.
Beach, Sylvia. Shakespeare and Company. Harcourt, Brace.
47
Health
Sylvia Beach
SB
had suffered from health problems all her life, but as the responsibilities of owning a bookstore and publishing Ulysses grew, her migraines increased in length and intensity. The headaches began in her pre-teen years...
Occupation
Sylvia Beach
SB
handed James Joyce
the first copy of Ulysses on his fortieth birthday; she placed the second copy in the window of Shakespeare and Company
.
Beach, Sylvia. Shakespeare and Company. Harcourt, Brace.
84
Wealth and Poverty
Sylvia Beach
SB
struggled for most of her life to be financially independent. At an early date she wrote: I must get at something profitable. My uselessness utterly depresses me.
Fitch, Noel Riley. Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation: A History of Literary Paris in the Twenties and Thirties. W. W. Norton.
32
Her career as a bookshop owner...
Occupation
Sylvia Beach
SB
and James Joyce
signed a contract for her to publish his Pomes Penyeach, a baker's dozen to be sold for one shilling.
A baker's dozen numbers thirteen, one more than there were pennies...
Textual Production
Sylvia Beach
Though the essays were solicited and overseen by Joyce
, SB
did much of the editorial work and designed the cover.
Beach, Sylvia. Shakespeare and Company. Harcourt, Brace.
4 December 1931: The BBC announced the resignation of Hilda...
Writing climate item
4 December 1931
The BBC
announced the resignation of Hilda Matheson
, its director of talks, which she had actually submitted in October. This was the climax of a long-running struggle over a series of talks by Harold Nicolson
1946: Critic Erich Auerbach published, in German,...
Writing climate item
1946
Critic Erich Auerbach
published, in German, the influential study which became in its English translation, 1953, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. He wrote it at Istanbul, as a Jewish refugee...
By late October 1975: The short-story volume Angels at the Ritz,...
Writing climate item
By late October 1975
The short-story volume Angels at the Ritz, by expatriate Irish writer William Trevor (born Trevor Cox
in 1928), was hailed by Graham Greene
as probably the best collection of stories since Joyce
's Dubliners.
October 1996: Irish journalist and writer Nuala O'Faolain...
Writing climate item
October 1996
Irish journalist and writer Nuala O'Faolain
published her autobiography Are You Somebody? The Accidental Memoir of a Dublin Woman.
22 January 2008: Day, the fifth novel by Scottish author,...
Women writers item
22 January 2008
Day, the fifth novel by Scottish author, playwright and stand-up comedian A. L. Kennedy
(whose unmentioned first name is Alison), won the 2007 Costa (formerly Whitbread) Book of the Year prize.
Texts
Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Egoist, 1917.
Joyce, James. Chamber Music. Elkin Mathews, 1907.
Joyce, James. Dubliners. Grant Richards, 1914.
Joyce, James. Exiles. Grant Richards, 1918.
Joyce, James. Finnegans Wake. Faber and Faber, 1939.
Joyce, James. Pomes Penyeach. Shakespeare and Company, 1927.
Joyce, James. Stephen Hero. J. Cape, 1944.
Joyce, James. Ulysses. Shakespeare and Company, 1922.
