A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

He would create the conscience of his race. First, he had to escape it.

James Joyce's first novel is the story of a soul awakening—a young man's journey from the suffocating constraints of family, church, and nation toward the freedom of artistic self-definition. It is one of the great coming-of-age novels in any language.

Stephen Dedalus grows up in late nineteenth-century Ireland, a country paralyzed by politics and piety. He is a sensitive, intelligent boy, bullied at school, confused by his awakening sexuality, and tormented by his family's descent into poverty. He struggles with his faith, confessing his sins in a panic of guilt, only to realize that the priests who offer him absolution are themselves trapped by the same dogmas he is trying to escape. He rejects the priesthood. He rejects law and medicine. He rejects the Irish nationalist movement, which he sees as another form of servitude.

In the novel's final pages, he announces his artistic creed: "I will not serve that which I no longer believe... in the name of the freedom of my heart and mind." He will leave Ireland. He will forge in the smithy of his soul "the uncreated conscience of my race."

Joyce's prose matures as Stephen matures—from the simple language of childhood, through the elaborate Latinate periods of the schoolboy, to the lean, sculpted sentences of the young artist. The novel is a portrait of a mind forming itself, and the style is the portrait.

This is Joyce at his most lyrical and accessible: a novel about the pain of growing up, the necessity of betrayal, and the courage required to say "no" to everything that would keep you small.

• First published in serial form in 1914–1915, published in book form in 1916

• Joyce's first novel, originally titled Stephen Hero (a much longer, abandoned draft)

• A masterpiece of modernist literature and a foundational text of the twentieth-century novel

Available in multiple formats:

• Paperback & Hardcover: Beautifully designed print editions presenting the complete, unabridged text made to last.

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A beautifully crafted edition for your shelf, your device, or your ears, or the perfect gift for anyone who knows that the hardest part of becoming yourself is learning what you must leave behind.

About the Author

James Joyce (1882–1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and short story writer, widely regarded as one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. Born in Dublin, he was the eldest of ten surviving children. He left Ireland in 1904 with his future wife, Nora Barnacle, and spent most of his adult life in Trieste, Zurich, and Paris. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was his first novel, following the short story collection Dubliners (1914). It was followed by his masterpieces Ulysses(1922) and Finnegans Wake (1939). Joyce died in Zurich in 1941. The novel's protagonist, Stephen Dedalus, also appears as a major character in Ulysses. The title alludes to the myth of Daedalus, the master craftsman who built the labyrinth and fashioned wings to escape Crete. Joyce died in Zurich in 1941.