“Eveline” is just one story from the collection Dubliners by James Joyce. Many of the other stories are considered some of the most influential short stories ever written. The final tale, “The Dead,” was meticulously adapted into a film by John Houston. The movie serves as an excellent companion to the book.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man stands as the most approachable of Joyce’s other works. Its prose is reminiscent of the concluding pages of “The Dead,” the last story in Dubliners. While more experimental than Dubliners, the autobiographical A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man acts as a stepping stone to the much more complex Ulysses. Joyce’s first novel is one of the early examples of modernism and a pivotal text in twentieth-century literature. It vividly describes the Jesuit school and Irish-Catholic upbringing.

Nora, a biography of Nora Joyce by Brenda Maddox, offers an intriguing look at Joyce’s relationship with his life partner, who inspired many of his characters. There are notable similarities between Eveline and Nora, although Nora did leave Ireland unmarried with Joyce. Nora is one of the few works on Joyce that places his wife at the center, making it useful for anyone adopting a feminist approach to Joyce’s work.

To the Lighthouse (1922) by Virginia Woolf is considered a landmark in modernist literature. Much of the text is presented as a stream of consciousness, often from a woman’s perspective. In this way, it naturally extends the artistic techniques Joyce employed in “Eveline” and illustrates his influence on an entire literary movement.

Edna O’Brien’s short biography, James Joyce (1999), offers a more accessible alternative to Ellmann’s comprehensive biography, which is regarded as the definitive account of Joyce’s life. O’Brien, a renowned Irish author, presents a vivid portrait of one of the century’s geniuses, complete with admiration and acknowledgment of his flaws. The biography reads like a novel.

James Joyce and Sexuality by Richard Brown highlights the pervasive presence of sexuality in Joyce’s work. Joyce’s writings were once banned in the United States and viewed with suspicion for years in Ireland. For a more detailed account of Joyce’s ongoing battles with censors, Bruce Arnold’s The Scandal of Ulysses provides valuable insights.