Ellmann's Joyce

The story of the most acclaimed literary biography of the twentieth centuryan ingeniously plotted, behind-the-scenes account of how the literary critic and scholar Richard Ellmann shaped James Joyces reputation. Richard Ellmanns James Joyce, published in 1959, was hailed by Anthony Burgess as the greatest literary biography of the twentieth century. Frank Kermode thought the book would fix Joyces image for a generation, a prediction that was if anything too cautious. The biography won the National Book Award and durably secured Joyces standing as a preeminent modernist. Ellmanns Joyce provides the biography of the biography, exploring how Ellmann came to his subject, gained the cooperation of Joyces family and estate, shrewdly, doggedly collected vital papers and interviews, placated publishers, thwarted competitors, and carefully balanced narrative with literary analysis. Ellmanns Joyce also removes the veil from the biographerrichly rewarded in public, admirable in private life, but also possessed of a startling secret life. An eminent biographer himself, Zachary Leader constructs a powerful argument not only in support of Ellmanns intellectual and artistic claims but also on behalf of literary biography generally. In the process, he takes readers on a rare tour through midcentury publishing houses in New York and London, as well as the corridors and classrooms of elite universities, from Yale to Oxford. The influence of Ellmanns book, recognized instantly, persists to this day, among literary scholars and Joyce fans alike. Filled with surprising details, tales of intrigue from the heyday of literary publishing, and intimate portraits of the Joyce and Ellmann families, Ellmanns Joyce is as immersive as a walk around town with Leopold Bloom and as moving as the thickly drifted snow on Michael Fureys grave.