Dublin life, family duties, private hopes, and missed opportunities.
James Joyce (1882–1941) was an Irish novelist and short story writer associated with modernism. Born and educated in Dublin, he left Ireland with Nora Barnacle in 1904 and spent much of his life in Trieste, Zurich, and Paris. His collection Dubliners (1914) depicts life in his native city. His later novels include A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), Ulysses (1922), and Finnegans Wake (1939).
The fifteen stories in Dubliners follow children and adults dealing with family duties, money, religion, and frustrated hopes. In “Araby,” a boy plans to visit a bazaar to buy a gift for a girl he admires. “Eveline” follows a young woman considering whether to leave Dublin with her lover. Joyce uses ordinary conversations and closely observed details to reveal feelings his characters struggle to express. Moments of recognition often change their understanding without resolving their difficulties.
From a quick encounter to a longer story.
A boy promises to bring a gift from a bazaar to the girl he adores, and waits for his chance to go.
Eveline must decide whether to leave her family and sail away with the man she hopes to marry.
Gabriel Conroy attends his aunts’ annual dance, where an evening of music and conversation unsettles his assumptions.
Reuniting with an old friend makes a Dublin clerk question the life and ambitions he has settled for.
A mother manages her daughter’s concert engagement and presses the organizers to honor their contract.
A solitary bank clerk forms an unexpected friendship with a married woman and must decide how close to let her come.
After a motor race, a wealthy young Irishman joins his foreign friends for a night of celebration.
Two boys skip school in search of adventure and meet a stranger who unsettles their day.
Maria leaves the laundry for a Halloween visit with the family she helped raise.
After clashing with his boss, a Dublin clerk looks to an evening of drinking to restore his pride.
After a drunken fall, a salesman’s friends try to guide him back toward the church.
On the anniversary of Parnell’s death, campaign workers shelter from the rain and argue over Irish politics.
A boarding-house owner decides how to handle her daughter’s relationship with one of her lodgers.
A boy waits for news of an ailing priest and struggles to understand the adults’ uneasy silences.
Two Dublin men arrange a meeting with a servant, and one spends the evening waiting for news.
