Ellmann's Joyce
The Biography of a Masterpiece and Its Maker
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Harvard University Press
Published:6th May '25
Should be back in stock very soon
The story of the most acclaimed literary biography of the twentieth century—an ingeniously plotted, behind-the-scenes account of how the literary critic and scholar Richard Ellmann shaped James Joyce’s reputation.
Richard Ellmann’s James Joyce, published in 1959, was hailed by Anthony Burgess as “the greatest literary biography of the twentieth century.” Frank Kermode thought the book would “fix Joyce’s image for a generation,” a prediction that was if anything too cautious. The biography won the National Book Award and durably secured Joyce’s standing as a preeminent modernist.
Ellmann’s Joyce provides the biography of the biography, exploring how Ellmann came to his subject, gained the cooperation of Joyce’s family and estate, shrewdly, doggedly collected vital papers and interviews, placated publishers, thwarted competitors, and carefully balanced narrative with literary analysis. Ellmann’s Joyce also removes the veil from the biographer—richly rewarded in public, admirable in private life, but also possessed of a startling secret life. An eminent biographer himself, Zachary Leader constructs a powerful argument not only in support of Ellmann’s intellectual and artistic claims but also on behalf of literary biography generally. In the process, he takes readers on a rare tour through midcentury publishing houses in New York and London, as well as the corridors and classrooms of elite universities, from Yale to Oxford. The influence of Ellmann’s book, recognized instantly, persists to this day, among literary scholars and Joyce fans alike.
Filled with surprising details, tales of intrigue from the heyday of literary publishing, and intimate portraits of the Joyce and Ellmann families, Ellmann’s Joyce is as immersive as a walk around town with Leopold Bloom and as moving as the thickly drifted snow on Michael Furey’s grave.
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 *
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 *
A wise, balanced and utterly compelling biography. -- 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 *
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 *
Leader is himself a distinguished biographer…[in this book] he offers an extended homage to a master in his field. -- Rhodri Lewis * Literary Review *
A riveting glimpse inside the biography writing process, this scintillates. * 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 *
An engaging and interesting double biography, of man and work. -- 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
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
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
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
ISBN: 9780674248397
Dimensions: 235mm x 156mm x 33mm
Weight: 878g
464 pages