Ulysses

1997

Special Collections PR6019 O9 U422 1997. (Every effort has been made to contact copyright owners of the images displayed in this online exhibition. If any issues arise from their display, please contact Special Collections, University of Otago, special.collections@otago.ac.nz)

London: Picador

Renowned for being a ‘difficult read’, James Joyce’s Ulysses was first published in its entirety in 1922. Joyce (1882-1941) was born and educated in Dublin but lived most of his adult life in continental Europe with his wife, Nora Barnacle. Joyce first experienced the hero Odysseus, from Homer’s epic poem, The Odyssey, as a child and came to regard him as an ‘all-round character’. Much of Homer’s epic is mirrored by Joyce in the novel in terms of its characters, events, and themes, and its episodic structure. Ulysses is considered by some scholars to be one of the greatest and most influential novels of the early twentieth century.