Art, literature & culture

Publication of Ulysses

2 February 1922

Ulysses is a modernist novel by the Irish writer James Joyce, published in book form in Paris on 2 February 1922, Joyce's fortieth birthday, by Sylvia Beach of the bookshop Shakespeare and Company. Parts had appeared earlier in the American magazine The Little Review. The novel follows one day in Dublin, 16 June 1904, in the lives of Leopold Bloom, an advertising canvasser, Stephen Dedalus and Bloom's wife Molly. Its eighteen episodes loosely parallel Homer's Odyssey and use many styles, including stream of consciousness. The book was banned in the United States on grounds of obscenity until a court ruling in 1933. It is regarded as one of the most important novels of the twentieth century, and fans celebrate Bloomsday every year on 16 June.

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