Dubliners
by James Joyce (1882–1941)
- Free to read
- 5 hours to read
- 17 chapters
- Reading level: 6th grade
"Dubliners" by James Joyce is a collection of fifteen short stories written from 1904 to 1907 and published in 1914. Set in early twentieth-century Dublin, these stories portray Irish middle-class life through a lens of paralysis and disillusionment. Joyce holds up a mirror to his countrymen, exploring themes of nationalism, Catholicism, and British rule. The collection progresses chronologically from childhood through public life, with characters experiencing moments of sudden self-understanding. Each story captures lives marked by stagnation, failed dreams, and the struggle for spiritual liberation in a city caught at history's crossroads.
- Short stories
- Dublin (Ireland)
Read the opening
The Sisters
by James Joyce
The Sisters
An Encounter
Araby
Eveline
After the Race
Two Gallants
The Boarding House
A Little Cloud
Counterparts
Clay
A Painful Case
Ivy Day in the Committee Room
A Mother
Grace
The Dead
There was no hope for him this time: it was the third stroke. Night after night I had passed the house (it was vacation time) and studied the lighted square of window: and night after night I had found it lighted in the same way, faintly and evenly. If he was dead, I thought, I would see the reflection of candles on the darkened blind for I knew that two candles must be set at the head of a corpse. He had often said to me: “I am not long for this world,” and I had thought his words idle. Now I knew they were true. Every night as I gazed up at the window I said softly to myself the word paralysis. It had always sounded strangely in my ears, like the word gnomon in the Euclid and the word simony in the Catechism. But now it sounded to me like the name of some maleficent and sinful being. It filled me with fear, and yet I longed to be nearer to it and to look upon its deadly work.
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About this edition
This free edition of Dubliners by James Joyce comes from Project Gutenberg eBook #2814, released 2001-09-01. It is in the public domain in the United States, so you can read it here in full at no cost, on any phone, tablet or computer. Genre: Short Stories, British Literature.
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