James Joyce was born in Dublin on 2 February 1882. He was one of a large family described by his father as 'sixteen or seventeen children'. He was educated at Clongowes Wood College and later at Belvedere College, Dublin. He did well at school, being interested in poetry, Latin, and languages. In 1898, he went to the Dublin college of the Royal University, where he studied philosophy and languages. he was interested in the theatre and in April 1900 wrote in the Fortnightly Review on Ibsen's When We Dead Awaken. In October 1902 Joyce went to Paris, but returned to Dublin in 1903 as his mother was dying. He taught at a school in Dalkey until he married in 1904, when he and his wife went to Zurich and later Trieste, where Joyce taught languages in the Berlitz school.

He returned to Dublin in 1912, when he made an unsuccessful attempt to publish Dubliners privately. He spent the First World War in Zurich with his wife and two children in great poverty, but was helped by a grant of £100 from the Privy Purse. He lived in Paris from 1920, and published in 1922 Ulysses and in 1939 Finnegans Wake. He died in January 1941.