The James Joyce BBC Radio Collection Ulysses, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man & Dubliners

A collection of works by James Joyce, united by the voices of a star cast that includes Andrew Scott, Henry Goodman, Niamh Cusack, and Stephen Rea.

This collection will include:

Ulysses: a full-cast dramatization starring Henry Goodman as Leopold Bloom and Andrew Scott as Stephen Dedalus, as they wander across Dublin in the course of one ordinary day, the 16th June 1904. Also starring Niamh Cusack as Molly Bloom and Stephen Rea as the Narrator.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: a abridged Book at Bedtime reading of James Joyce' autobiographical modernist masterpiece, read by Andrew Scott.

Dubliners: James Joyce's naturalistic short stories combine to create a celebration of a city. These abridged Book at Bedtime readings of all 15 stories are narrated by Stephen Rea.

Also included is an abridged reading of James Joyce – A Biography by Gordon Bowker. It is read by Jim Norton, and the voice of Joyce is Andrew Scott.

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was born on February 2, 1882 in Rathgar, Dublin and educated at Jesuit schools before attending University College, Dublin. After graduating, he left Ireland for Paris, at first to study medicine, but returned home after a year when his mother became ill. Joyce struggled to make a living in Dublin, and soon left the country again, this time in the company of Nora Barnacle, who would be his life-long companion and mother of his two children. Settling in Trieste, Joyce taught English and began once more to write. He published a volume of verse, Chamber Music in 1907, which was followed by Dubliners in 1914, and APortrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which was published serially in the Egoist magazine. These works won Joyce the attention of Ezra Pound, and through Pound, the patronage of publisher Harriet Shaw Weaver. In 1920, Joyce moved to Paris, where he began writing Ulysses, though by now suffering severe difficulties with his sight. Ulysses was published in 1922, and was celebrated as a work of immense literary importance by writers such as T.S.Eliot and Hemingway. It was followed by Finnegan's Wake, published in its completed form in 1939. Joyce and his family fled the German occupation of France by moving to Zurich in 1940, but his health rapidly worsened, and he died on January 13, 1941.