Dubliners

James Joyce

Dubliners

London

Grant Richards

1914

Inscribed with the ownership signature of Belfast novelist and critic Forrest Reid

In 1904 George Russell (AE) published the first three of James Joyce’s now classic stories in his weekly journal, The Irish Homestead. It was the year of Joyce’s departure from Ireland, and against the backdrop of rising nationalism and insularity, Joyce sought to present “a nicely polished looking-glass” to Dublin, ripe with the theme of paralysis. While in Rome and recalling Ireland’s abiding sense of hospitality, he finished his final, most famous story, “The Dead.” This copy of Dubliners belonged to Forrest Reid, whose novel Following Darkness influenced Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Reid also wrote the first book-length work of criticism on W. B. Yeats.