Author Guide · Modernist Fiction, Drama & Poetry
Books Written by
On 2 February 1922, James Joyce’s fortieth birthday, Sylvia Beach’s Paris bookshop Shakespeare and Company published Ulysses in 1,000 numbered copies, printed in Dijon. A New York court had already convicted the magazine that serialised it of obscenity, and the book could not be published legally in the United States until 1934. Joyce, born in Dublin in 1882, had left Ireland with Nora Barnacle in 1904 and spent the rest of his life in Trieste, Zurich and Paris, yet almost everything he wrote is set in Dublin. He published seven books in his lifetime, from a slim volume of love poems to Finnegans Wake, which took him seventeen years, and two more appeared after his death. This guide covers his 9 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 9 key books · 1907–1968 · Updated October 2026
ClickTap a spine to jump to that book below.
Quick answer
James Joyce’s best-known book is Ulysses (1922). His other key books are the short stories Dubliners (1914), the novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Finnegans Wake (1939), the play Exiles (1918), the poetry collections Chamber Music (1907) and Pomes Penyeach (1927), and two works published after his death, Stephen Hero (1944) and Giacomo Joyce (1968). Start with Dubliners. Below are all nine in order, how the obscenity bans on Ulysses ended, and where to hear his voice.
Where to Start with James Joyce
If you want the easiest way in
→ Dubliners (1914) — fifteen stories, ending with “The Dead”.
If you want his first novel
→ A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) — Stephen Dedalus grows up and decides to leave Ireland.
If you want the book everyone means
→ Ulysses (1922) — one day in Dublin, 16 June 1904.
If you want his poetry
→ Pomes Penyeach (1927) — thirteen short poems, sold for a shilling.
9 James Joyce Books, in Order
Chamber Music
His first book, a sequence of short love lyrics in the manner of Elizabethan song, published in London by Elkin Mathews on the recommendation of the poet Arthur Symons. It appeared while Joyce was living in Trieste.
Dubliners
Fifteen stories of Dublin life, moving from childhood through adolescence to adult and public life, and ending with “The Dead”, set at a Christmas party. Getting it published took years: Maunsel and Company dropped it over fears of libel and had the printed sheets destroyed, and Grant Richards finally issued it in London on 15 June 1914. John Huston filmed “The Dead” in 1987, his last film.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Stephen Dedalus grows up in Catholic Dublin, from Clongowes Wood College to university: a Christmas dinner ruined by an argument over Parnell, a terrifying sermon on hell, and finally his decision to leave Ireland to become an artist. It ran in 25 instalments in the London magazine The Egoist from 1914 to 1915, and B. W. Huebsch published it as a book in New York on 29 December 1916. Joseph Strick filmed it in 1977.
Exiles
His only surviving play, written in Trieste in 1914 and 1915 and published by Grant Richards on 25 May 1918. The writer Richard Rowan returns to Dublin from Rome with Bertha, the mother of his son, and lets his friend Robert Hand pursue her. W. B. Yeats declined it for the Abbey Theatre; it premiered in German in Munich in August 1919, and Harold Pinter’s 1970 production in London revived its reputation.
Ulysses
One day in Dublin, 16 June 1904, followed through the advertising canvasser Leopold Bloom, the young teacher Stephen Dedalus and Bloom’s wife Molly, in 18 episodes that echo Homer’s Odyssey and each change style. Shakespeare and Company published it in Paris on 2 February 1922, after the American serialisation in The Little Review ended in an obscenity conviction. Time and the Modern Library have ranked it the greatest novel of the twentieth century. Joseph Strick’s 1967 film was nominated for an Academy Award for its screenplay.
Pomes Penyeach
Thirteen short poems written between 1904 and 1924, published by Shakespeare and Company on 7 July 1927 for one shilling or twelve francs. The title puns on poems and pommes, apples sold at a penny each; the first poem, “Tilly”, is the extra one, like a baker’s dozen.
Finnegans Wake
His last book, written over seventeen years and published on 4 May 1939 by Faber and Faber in London and Viking in New York. Parts appeared first as “Work in Progress”, mainly in the Paris magazine transition. It follows the Earwicker family — HCE, his wife ALP, their sons Shem and Shaun and daughter Issy — in a dream language built from puns and many languages, and its last sentence runs back into its first word, “riverrun”. Early reviews were largely baffled or hostile.
Stephen Hero
The novel Joyce began on 2 February 1904 and abandoned in 1907, before reworking the material into the much shorter Portrait. The surviving part, mostly about Stephen’s university years, was published by Jonathan Cape in 1944. Its plainer, fuller telling shows what Joyce cut and compressed.
Giacomo Joyce
A short prose sketch from his Trieste years, in brief fragments, recording an English teacher’s infatuation with a young pupil. Joyce never published it and reused some of its lines in Portrait and Ulysses; Faber and Faber published it in 1968, edited by Richard Ellmann.
In What Order to Read James Joyce
Joyce’s fiction is best read in the order he wrote it, because each book builds on the last. Dubliners sets out the city; A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man introduces Stephen Dedalus; Ulysses picks Stephen up again two years later and adds Leopold Bloom. Reading Portrait first makes the first three episodes of Ulysses much easier to follow.
Leave Finnegans Wake until after Ulysses, and try reading it aloud; the “Anna Livia Plurabelle” chapter is a good test. Stephen Hero and Giacomo Joyce are for readers who already know Portrait. The poems and Exiles can be read at any point.
A reading path
1. Dubliners (1914)
2. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)
3. Ulysses (1922)
4. Exiles (1918)
5. Finnegans Wake (1939)
Everything Else James Joyce Published
Beyond the 9 key books: 6 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Broadsides and poems
2
2 books · 1912–1936
- 1912Gas from a Burnera satirical broadside attacking the Dublin publisher who destroyed Dubliners
- 1936Collected Poemspublished in New York by the Black Sun Press
Letters and criticism, published after his death
4
4 books · 1957–1975
- 1957Letters of James Joyce, Vol. 1edited by Stuart Gilbert
- 1959The Critical Writingsessays, reviews and lectures
- 1966Letters of James Joyce, Vols. 2 and 3edited by Richard Ellmann
- 1975Selected Lettersedited by Richard Ellmann
The years · 1882–1941
Quick facts about James Joyce
- Known for
- Joyce is known for remaking the novel around the inner life of ordinary people in a single city, Dublin, above all in Ulysses (1922).
- 1882
- Born in Rathgar, Dublin
- 1904
- Leaves Ireland with Nora Barnacle
- 1914
- Dubliners
- 1922
- Ulysses
- 1933
- Judge Woolsey rules Ulysses not obscene
- 1941
- Dies in Zurich
- Born
- 2 February 1882, Rathgar, Dublin, Ireland
- Died
- 13 January 1941, Zurich, Switzerland, aged 58, after surgery for a perforated ulcer
- Education
- Clongowes Wood College; Belvedere College; University College Dublin
- Lived
- Pola, Trieste and Rome (1904–1915), Zurich (1915–1920), Paris (1920–1940), Zurich again from 1940
- Family
- Nora Barnacle, his partner from 1904, married in London in 1931; children Giorgio (1905) and Lucia (1907)
- Buried
- Fluntern Cemetery, Zurich, with Nora Barnacle
The red mark is 1922: Ulysses, published in Paris on Joyce’s fortieth birthday.
How James Joyce Writes: One City, Many Styles
Joyce wrote about Dublin for his whole career while living in Trieste, Zurich and Paris. He worked from exact local detail — real streets, shops, songs and people, many of them under their own names — and argued that this was the point: “In the particular is contained the universal.” Ulysses follows its characters across the city on one specific day, 16 June 1904, the day of his first walk out with Nora Barnacle.
His style changes with each book, and often within one. Dubliners is plain and spare. In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man the language grows up with Stephen, from baby talk on the first page to the diary entries of a young man at the end, told in a free indirect style that stays close to his thoughts. Ulysses goes further: each of its 18 episodes has its own technique, from the interior monologue of Bloom and Stephen to a chapter in the form of a play and the unpunctuated monologue of Molly Bloom that ends the book.
Finnegans Wake takes the method to its limit, writing a night’s dream in a language of puns and portmanteau words drawn from dozens of languages, in a circle that ends where it begins. Joyce knew how hard it was; of Ulysses he said he had “put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries”. Both books are easier read aloud: much of their meaning is in the sound.
Frequently asked questions about James Joyce’s books
How many books has James Joyce written?
He published seven books in his lifetime: three novels (A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake), one story collection (Dubliners), one play (Exiles) and two small books of poems (Chamber Music and Pomes Penyeach). Two more appeared after his death, the unfinished novel Stephen Hero (1944) and Giacomo Joyce (1968), making the nine on this page. Letters, essays and collected poems are listed in the bibliography.
What are James Joyce’s books in order?
Chamber Music (1907), Dubliners (1914), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), Exiles (1918), Ulysses (1922), Pomes Penyeach (1927), Finnegans Wake (1939), Stephen Hero (1944) and Giacomo Joyce (1968).
Where should I start with James Joyce?
With Dubliners, then A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, then Ulysses. The stories are short and introduce the city and the kind of people who fill the later books; Portrait introduces Stephen Dedalus, who reappears in Ulysses.
What is James Joyce’s most famous book?
Ulysses (1922), the story of one day in Dublin, 16 June 1904. Time, the Modern Library and others have ranked it the greatest novel of the twentieth century.
Why was Ulysses banned?
For obscenity. The Little Review in New York began serialising it in March 1918; two issues were suppressed in 1919, and after a complaint about the “Nausicaa” episode its editors, Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap, were tried and in February 1921 fined $50 each and ordered to stop publishing it. The book itself was then kept out of the United States, and it was banned in the United Kingdom until 1936. Random House arranged a test case, and on 6 December 1933 Judge John M. Woolsey of the federal court in New York ruled that it was not obscene, writing that though parts were “somewhat emetic”, “nowhere does it tend to be an aphrodisiac”. The Court of Appeals upheld him 2–1 in 1934, and Random House published the first authorised American edition that year. Ireland never formally banned it.
What is Bloomsday?
16 June, the day on which Ulysses is set, in 1904. Joyce chose the date of his first walk out with Nora Barnacle, who became his wife. Readers mark it every year, above all in Dublin, by following Leopold Bloom’s route and reading the book aloud.
What is Finnegans Wake about?
On the surface, a Dublin publican, HCE, his wife ALP and their children Shem, Shaun and Issy, through one night’s dream. It is written in a language of puns and invented words from many languages, and it is circular: the last sentence breaks off and is completed by the first. Joyce worked on it for seventeen years, and it was published in 1939.
Have James Joyce’s books been filmed?
Yes. Joseph Strick filmed Ulysses in 1967, with Milo O’Shea as Bloom; it was nominated for an Academy Award for its screenplay. Strick also filmed A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in 1977, and Sean Walsh’s Bloom (2003) starred Stephen Rea. John Huston’s The Dead (1987), from the last story in Dubliners, starred Anjelica Huston and was nominated for two Academy Awards.
Is there a recording of James Joyce’s voice?
Yes, two, though no film of him speaking exists. In 1924 Sylvia Beach arranged for him to record a speech from the “Aeolus” episode of Ulysses at the HMV studio near Paris, and in 1929 the linguist C. K. Ogden recorded him reading the end of the “Anna Livia Plurabelle” chapter of what became Finnegans Wake, in Cambridge. Both are free to hear on the Internet Archive.
Where is James Joyce buried?
In Fluntern Cemetery in Zurich, where he died on 13 January 1941. Nora Barnacle stayed in Zurich and was buried there with him after her death in 1951. In 2019 Dublin city councillors voted to ask the Irish government to seek the return of his remains, as Nora had hoped in 1948, but they remain in Zurich.
Footnotes
- James Joyce — Wikipedia
- Ulysses (novel) — Wikipedia
- United States v. One Book Called Ulysses — Wikipedia
- Bibliography: works by James Joyce — International James Joyce Foundation, University of Tulsa
- Finnegans Wake — Wikipedia
- James Joyce reading his work (1924/1929) — The Public Domain Review
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.”
— James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)
If this shelf interested you, the full bookshelf has more: reading lists by theme, author guides, and notes on what is actually worth your time.
Browse the full bookshelf Get book recommendations