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Ellmann's Joyce
The Biography of a Masterpiece and Its Maker
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Zachary Leader
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2025
About this book
Richard Ellmann’s James Joyce, published in 1959, has been called “the greatest literary biography of the twentieth century.” Ellmann’s Joyce provides the biography of the biography—an eye-opening account of how Ellmann’s book came to be, the intrigue surrounding it, and its enduring impact on the study and making of literary lives.
Reviews
The British critic and scholar Christopher Ricks said of Ellmann’s biography that it ‘engages every aspect of Joyce’s life and interests,’ from the amatory to the political to the domestic…‘Ellmann’s Joyce’ does the same for its likable subject.
-- James Campbell Wall Street Journal
-- James Campbell Wall Street Journal
I have always been grateful to Ellmann for taking such a democratizing approach to this most despotic of authors, just as I am now to Leader for following suit…what Zachary Leader gives us is a richly researched, nuanced portrait of the earlier life and working processes of a writer who not only shone light into one of the great literary minds of the twentieth century, but, in the process, became one in his own right.
-- Eimear McBride Times Literary Supplement
-- Eimear McBride Times Literary Supplement
A wise, balanced and utterly compelling biography.
-- Frances Wilson The Spectator
-- Frances Wilson The Spectator
[Leader] writes not only with great respect for the labour involved, but with a sense of its understated drama… makes a compelling case for the validity and critical value of the often maligned genre of literary biography.
-- James Ley Australian Book Review
-- James Ley Australian Book Review
The fullest account yet available of the writing of the great James Joyce biography.... more than just a biography. It is an exploration of the making of the very craft it exemplifies, a fascinating study of the creation of two legends: that of the writer with whom Ellmann's work deals and that of the biography itself.
-- Terence Killeen Irish Times
-- Terence Killeen Irish Times
Leader is himself a distinguished biographer…[in this book] he offers an extended homage to a master in his field.
-- Rhodri Lewis Literary Review
-- Rhodri Lewis Literary Review
A riveting glimpse inside the biography writing process, this scintillates.
-- Publishers Weekly (starred review)
-- Publishers Weekly (starred review)
[A] fascinating book…Leader brilliantly conveys the life-writer’s exciting pursuit of Joyce’s family and friends, and his frequent discovery of vital information.
-- Jeffrey Meyers The Article
-- Jeffrey Meyers The Article
An engaging and interesting double biography, of man and work.
-- M. A. Orthofer Complete Review
-- M. A. Orthofer Complete Review
An ingeniously conceived and beautifully executed book by a preeminent literary biographer. It is compulsively readable as well as profoundly sympathetic, drawing a memorable portrait of a fascinating man and his intellectual milieu, and making an important statement about literary biography, its form, uses, and implications. A remarkable achievement.
-- R. F. Foster, author of W. B. Yeats: A Life
-- R. F. Foster, author of W. B. Yeats: A Life
A biography of a biographer by a biographer is, for a biographer like myself, a welcome, exciting, and above all rare event. Though the story is hardly ever told, Zachary Leader knows that what goes into the making of a great biography is often as much of a story as the story itself. With Ellmann’s Joyce, Leader shows how biographers think and work, and how their thinking and working shapes the posthumous destinies of those they write about.
-- Benjamin Moser, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Sontag: Her Life and Work
-- Benjamin Moser, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Sontag: Her Life and Work
Zachary Leader's biography of Richard Ellmann uncovers the struggles and secrets of Ellmann's life with great empathy and inimitable panache. Objective and affectionate, gossipy and grand, this book is a great read.
-- Elaine Showalter, author of The Civil Wars of Julia Ward Howe: A Biography
-- Elaine Showalter, author of The Civil Wars of Julia Ward Howe: A Biography
Zachary Leader has given us the gift of explanation without simplification. This is a masterpiece of insight and dignified audacity, sure to immortalize its subject—the art of literary biography and one of its greatest practitioners, Richard Ellmann.
-- Declan Kiberd, author of Ulysses and Us
-- Declan Kiberd, author of Ulysses and Us
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PART II The Biography
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Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
May 6, 2025
eBook ISBN:
9780674300446
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
Main content:
448
eBook ISBN:
9780674300446
Keywords for this book
James Joyce; Richard Ellmann; literary biography; modernism; Zachary Leader; literary criticism; biography of biography; literary reputation; Joyce family; publishing history; academia; literary scholarship; Ulysses; midcentury publishing; Oxford; Yale; National Book Award; a portrait of the artist as a young man; dubliners; literary legacy; archival research; intellectual history; biographical methodology; literary estates; scholarly methodology; modernist literature; literary influence; 20th century literature; Irish literature
