THE CRITICAL WRITINGS OF JAMES JOYCE

This is a choice and supremely well edited collection of Joyce's critical writings brought together from unpublished manuscripts, playbills and obscure periodicals and pamphlets. It opens with a schoolboy essay and closes with a 1937 manifesto in France on the Moral Right of Authors, prompted by the Ulysses piracy case. In between are vivid commentaries on some of Joyce's favorite authors, Ibsen, the Irish poet Mangan, Yeats and Pound, articles on Irish literature, satirical diatribes against Ireland's Feinians, and some short, whimsical pieces of a more ephemeral but nonetheless delightful nature. It will come as no surprise to all readers of Ulysses that Joyce was a critic of sorts, for not the least brilliant chapter in this book is devoted to a new and elaborate theory of Shakespeare's life and works. Many of the longer pieces here were written in Italian as lectures which Joyce delivered in Trieste, and they appear for the first time in English in this book. Each piece has been edited with loving care and is preceded by a brief introduction explaining its provenance, and the footnotes are able and to the point. An important contribution, for all devotees of Joyce and literary criticism in general.