James Joyce was the second of ten children (four boys and six girls) born to John and Mary Jane Murray Joyce, who were then living in Rathgar, a suburb of Dublin. Because the first child had died in early infancy, James was in effect the eldest child. The closest bond with any of his siblings was formed with his brother John Stanislaus, whose even temperament and stolid nature complemented Joyce's turbulence and prodigality. Joyce's father, a great raconteur and wit, the only child of an only child, had a remarkably extensive memory for Dublin personalities, history, local trivia, and song (both father and son had fine tenor voices and both enjoyed going to the opera). The traits of the father were enduring and shaping forces in his son's artistic development.
Joyce's father sent him to Clongowes Wood College, an excellent Jesuit school a day's ride from Dublin, to begin his formal education at the age of six. Its intellectual rigor, emphasis upon language, and its spiritual if somewhat repressive orientation to human affairs also made lifelong impressions upon Joyce's imagination. Many years later Joyce told his friend Frank Budgen that it was more accurate to classify him as a Jesuit rather than as a Catholic.
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