James Joyce was born on 2 February 1882 in Dublin. He studied modern languages at University College, Dublin. After graduating, Joyce moved to Paris for a brief period in 1902. In 1904 Joyce met Nora Barnacle, with whom he would spend the rest of his life and they moved to Europe and settled in Trieste where Joyce worked as a teacher. His first published work was a book of poems called Chamber Music (1907). This was followed by Dubliners (1914), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and the play Exiles (1918). In 1915 the First World War forced Joyce and Nora and their two children to move to Zürich. Joyce's most famous novel, Ulysses, was published in Paris in 1922.

In the same year he started work on his last great book, Finnegan's Wake (1939). James Joyce died in Zürich on 13 January 1941.