This biography of James Joyce concentrates on Joyce's early life in Dublin, since it was this period of obscurity that provided him with the material for Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses and even Finnegans Wake. It draws on recently discovered or previously overlooked sources to show how Joyce's early life - his education, his relationship with his siblings, his youthful loss of faith and his first sexual experiences - shaped so much he was to write in later years.