A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

James Joyce, 1918

Irish writers Modernist novels

Stephen Dedalus's early sensations and school experiences begin a novel about the formation of an artistic mind.

Read the book Contents

Length: 5 chapters
Reading time: About 5 hr 56 min
Words: 84,801

About the book

The story opens inside the sounds and associations of childhood: a father's tale, songs, smells, names and frightening rhymes. As Stephen enters the world of school, those intimate impressions encounter other people's judgments and the pressure to belong.

Joyce makes language part of the growing process rather than simply a means of describing it. Family loyalties, religion and education reach the reader through Stephen's shifting attention, giving the novel its interest in how a person learns to think and speak for himself.

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Irish writers Modernist novels

This edition

Text from Standard Ebooks, who proofread and typeset it and dedicate their edition to the public domain. James Joyce died more than 70 years ago, so the work is out of copyright in the UK. Includes the original epigraph.