A Ulysses Chronology

Early Days

Dublin

1902 — The compilation of the Epiphanies is begun.

Paris

February-March 1903 — The ‘Aristotle’ notebook on aesthetics is compiled.

Dublin

Summer 1903 — Stephen Hero is begun.

January 1904 — The narrative essay ‘A Portrait of the Artist’ is written.

Early July 1904 — Dubliners is begun.

13 July 1904 — Funeral of Mat Kane (model for ‘Hades’) takes place.

Pola

November 1904 — The ‘Aquinas’ notebook on esthetics is compiled.

Trieste

June 1905 — Work on Stephen Hero (incomplete) is suspended.

Rome

25 September 1906 — A short story, ‘Ulysses', is conceived for Dubliners.

Trieste

20 September 1907 — Dubliners is completed.

September 1907 — Stephen Hero (suspended since 1905) is abandoned and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is begun.

1911 — Joyce throws the manuscript of Portrait into the fire; it is rescued.

11 November 1912 — Joyce gives lecture on Hamlet at the Università del Popolo.

Autumn 1913 — Exiles is begun.

November 1913 — The ‘Notes for Exiles’ are compiled.

ca. 1913/1914 — Portrait (Doherty) extension is written but laid aside.

ca. Early 1914 — Portrait manuscript is completed.

2 February 1914 — Serialisation of Portrait in the London magazine The Egoist begins.

15 June 1914 — Dubliners is published.

ca. August 1914 — Giacomo Joyce manuscript is written.

ca. Spring 1915 — Exiles is completed.

ca. Spring/Summer 1915 — Doherty fragment is expanded to form a beginning to a ‘sequel’ to Portrait to be entitled ‘Ulysses'.

16 June 1915 — The first episode of the ‘sequel’ to Portrait (an early version of ‘Telemachus’) is completed. (Novel is set on 8 October 1904.)

Zurich / Locarno

July 1915 — The typescript of Exiles is prepared.

1 September 1915 — Final episode of serialisation of Portrait in The Egoist is published.

October 1916 — First part, part of middle and part of end of the ‘sequel’ to Portrait are completed.

November 1916 — Joyce suffers a nervous collapse.

December 1916 — A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is published in the United States.

January 1917 — Joyce has a first attack of glaucoma.

22 February 1917 — First subvention from Harriet Weaver arrives.

1917 — Ulysses is reconceived and divorced from Portrait.

29 May 1917 — The earliest known mention by Joyce of Leopold Bloom.

Summer/Autumn 1917 — The earliest Ulysses notebooks, N1 (Dublin NLI.3), N2 (missing VI.D.7) and N3 (Buffalo VIII.A.8), are compiled. Leopold Bloom is fleshed out. The date of the novel is fixed at 16 June 1904.

Dates of completion of the fair copies

Part I. Telemachiad (Stephen Dedalus)

Locarno

Late November 1917— Episode 1: Telemachus

Mid December 1917 — Episode 2: Nestor

Zurich

End of January 1918 — Episode 3: Proteus

Part II. Odyssey (The Wanderings)

Mid March 1918 — Episode 4: Calypso

Early April 1918 — Episode 5: Lotus Eaters

Mid May 1918 — Episode 6: Hades

Mid August 1918 — Episode 7: Aeolus

Late October 1918 — Episode 8: Lestrygonians

End December 1918 — Episode 9: Scylla and Charybdis

End January 1919 — Episode 10: Wandering Rocks

Mid May 1919— Episode 11: Sirens

September 1919 — Episode 12: Cyclops

Trieste

Early February 1920 — Episode 13: Nausicaa

Mid May 1920 — Episode 14: Oxen of the Sun

Paris

Late December 1920 — Episode 15: Circe

Part III. Nostos (The Homecoming)

February 1921 — Episode 16: Eumaeus

Mid September 1921 — Episode 18: Penelope

Late October 1921 — Episode 17: Ithaca

Arrival and revision of the proofs

11 June 1921 – 20 January 1922

Publication by Shakespeare and Company

2 February 1922