Informed by a writer's view of how a writer works, this perceptive study illuminates the careers of two major figures of twentieth-century literature, T.S. Eliot and James Joyce. Sultan engages in a unique form of historical criticism, blending a literary history of Modernism with a richly intimate knowledge of three key works--"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," The Waste Land, and Ulysses--and confronting questions of literary theory implicit in the modernist period. In doing so, he examines the antecedents of Modernism, focusing on three major influences--Flaubert, Baudelaire, and Dostoyevsky--and then traces the relations of Eliot and Joyce with their contemporaries, including Virginia Woolf and Wallace Stevens. Concluding with an appraisal of Eliot's and Joyce's impact on readers, writers, and literary theory today, Eliot, Joyce and Company sheds considerable light on the careers of these writers, on their works, and on the history of Modernism.