`a superlatively good biography of Joyce. It assembles, with a mastery Joyce himself would have admired, a great mass of published and unpublished testimony...It is informed by critical comment of high quality.' Frank Kermode, Observer.
`It is deeply erudite and tremendously comprehensive, but more than that, it is compellingly readable and beautifully written.' Times Literary Supplement.
`One of the great critical biographies of our generation.'Guardian.
''Perhaps the greatest literary biography ever ... Ellmann achieves a prodigious feat of scholarship.' ___The Observer___
`wonderfullyintelligent, elated, always amusing.' Stephen Spender, ___Books___
`Perhaps the greatest literary biography ever written...Ellmann achieves a prodigious feat of scholarship, one even more comprehensive than (and as readable as) his recent life of Wilde.' ___Observer___
'major scholarly work ... a new bench-mark for biography as a major vehicle of literary scholarship' John Batchelor, British Book News, September 1993