Perhaps Joyce's most personal work, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man depicts the intellectual awakening of one of literature's most memorable young heroes, Stephen Dedalus.Through a series of brilliant epiphanies that parallel his own aesthetic development, Joyce evokes Stephen's youth, from his impressionable years as the youngest student at the Clongowes Wood school to the deep religious conflict he experiences at a day school in Dublin, and finally to his college studies, where he challenges the conventions of his upbringing and his understanding of faith and intellectual freedom.

Perhaps Joyce's most personal work, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man depicts the intellectual awakening of one of literature's most memorable young heroes, Stephen Dedalus.Through a series of brilliant epiphanies that parallel his own aesthetic development, Joyce evokes Stephen's youth, from his impressionable years as the youngest student at the Clongowes Wood school to the deep religious conflict he experiences at a day school in Dublin, and finally to his college studies, where he challenges the conventions of his upbringing and his understanding of faith and intellectual freedom.

James Joyce's highly autobiographical novel was first published in the United States in 1916 to immediate acclaim. A remarkably rich study of a developing mind, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man made an indelible mark on literature and has confirmed Jovce's reputation as one of the world's greatest and most enduring writers.