James Joyce and Sylvia Beach

About the Project

First published on the 2nd February 1922, James Joyce’s Ulysses is widely considered a masterpiece of modernist literature and one of the most renowned works of Irish fiction. Coinciding with the centenary of Ulysses’ publication, Women and the Making of Ulysses highlights the significant and largely unacknowledged role of women in the realization of this famous novel. Through a major exhibition at the Harry Ransom Center (University of Texas), as well as a series of affiliated public events, we aim to tell the story of the formative role that both Joyce’s family and four women—Margaret Anderson, Jane Heap, Harriet Shaw Weaver, and Sylvia Beach—played in helping Joyce’s novel gain widespread notoriety and success.

The project is fortunate to have support from the Harry Ransom Center, and an Enterprise Project Grant (Loughborough University).