James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was born February 2, 1882, in Rathgar, a suburb of Dublin. He was the eldest of 16 children born to Mary Jane Joyce and John Stanislaus Joyce. John Joyce worked first in business, then as a civil servant, establishing a tenuous middleclass economic position. This position steadily eroded during James’s youth, as his father often drank, neglected his affairs, and borrowed money. According to contemporaries, John Joyce was a jolly, bibulous, pugnacious good fellow, notorious in Dublin for his extravagance, biting wit, and monocle. His son James inherited some of his traits—an interest in Irish politics, a love of music, a lively sense of humor, a distrust of the clergy, and spendthrift habits. From age 6 to 9, James Joyce attended Clongowes Wood College, considered the best Jesuit school in Ireland; from 11 to 15, Belvedere College; and from 16 to 20, University College, Dublin. When Joyce was just 9, he wrote his first poem, a tribute to his father’s hero, Charles Stewart Parnell, leader of the late-nineteenth-century Irish Home Rule movement. By 1902 several of Joyce’s college essays had been published, including “Ibsen’s New Drama” in The Fortnightly Review, a prominent English journal.
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