Rather than forging radically new means for fiction, the novels of James Joyce--A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), Ulysses (1922), and Finnegans Wake (1939)--as well as his single short-story collection, Dubliners (1914), changed the way fiction has been written in the twentieth century by subtly refining the advances made by others. Joyce's strict narrative focus in such a story as "The Sisters" (1904), for instance, had been used by Henry James in What Maisie Knew (1897); his use of free indirect discourse had been suggested by Gustave Flaubert's style indirect libre employed so successfully in Madame Bovary (1856-1857). In Joyce's hands, however, such techniques became seamless, almost invisible parts of the narrative structure. What could at times seem awkward in other writers makes itself known in Joyce's texts only after repeated careful readings.

James Augustus Alyosius Joyce was born on 2 February 1882 in Rathgar, a modest borough of Dublin...