A revealing new biography--the first in more than fifty years--of one of the twentieth-century's towering literary figures James Joyce was one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, but he was not immediately recognized as such. At twenty-two he chose a life of exile in cosmopolitan Europe in a bid to escape the suffocating atmosphere and parochial prejudices of his native Dublin. His life followed the classic "flight into exile" path taken by so many creative writers. His relationship with Nora Barnacle long aroused curious fascination, not least since--scandalously for the time--they lived together for twenty-seven years before marrying in 1931. Joyce's unstinting dedication to authorship picks him out as a writer in the romantic tradition. He battled against poverty and financial dependency for much of his adult life. He suffered, too, the slings and arrows of uncomprehending critics. "Ulysses," now widely regarded as the most innovative and influential of modernist texts, immediately ran into trouble with the censors of both Britain and America after it was published in Paris in 1922. Drawing on new material that has only recently come to light, Gordon Bowker's biography ventures beyond the exterior life to explore the inner landscape of an extraordinary writer who continues to influence and fascinate over a century after his birth.