James Joyce Centre

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish expatriate writer, widely considered to be one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. He is best known for his landmark novel Ulysses (1922) and its controversial successor Finnegans Wake (1939), as well as the short story collection Dubliners (1914) and the semi-autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916).

Although he spent most of his adult life outside Ireland, Joyce's psychological and fictional universe is firmly rooted in his native Dublin, the city which provides the settings and much of the subject matter for all his fiction. In particular, his tempestuous early relationship with the Irish Roman Catholic Church is reflected through a similar inner conflict in his recurrent alter ego Stephen Dedalus. As the result of his minute attentiveness to a personal locale and his self-imposed exile and influence throughout Europe, notably in Paris, Joyce became paradoxically one of the most cosmopolitan yet one of the most regionally-focused of all the English language writers of his time.

The James Joyce Centre is a museum dedicated to promoting an understanding of the life and works of James Joyce.

The Centre is situated in a restored 18th-century Georgian townhouse at 35 North Great George's Street Dublin, dating from a time when north inner city Dublin was at the height of its grandeur. On permanent exhibit is furniture from Paul Leon's apartment in Paris, where Joyce wrote much of Finnegans Wake, and the door to number 7 Eccles Street — home to Leopold Bloom, one of the more famous addresses in literature — which had been rescued from demolition by John Ryan. Temporary exhibitions interpret and illuminate various aspects of Joyce's life and work.