9 h 31 minAudiobook14 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 9 h 31 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if finding your own voice means questioning everything your family, church, and country ask you to believe?
In James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Stephen Dedalus grows up in Ireland, drawn to words, faith, and beauty. A sensitive child faces fear and injustice at boarding school, while his father’s spending pulls the family toward poorer homes. Around him, adults argue over loyalties he must learn to examine for himself.
This is a novel about the growth of a mind. Joyce brings you close to Stephen’s changing thoughts through sounds, sensations, and inner speech. Childhood fears give way to struggles with desire, religion, and identity. As the language grows with Stephen, the question sharpens: how can he make a life that is truly his own?
What you’ll discover
- A childhood felt from within Enter a small boy’s world through scraps of sound, smell, and feeling.
- A family under pressure Watch Simon Dedalus’s failing fortunes bring uncertainty into Stephen’s home and sense of belonging.
- Faith, fear, and desire Feel the struggle between Stephen’s private longings and the religious demands that shape his conscience.
- Language that grows up Follow prose that changes as a child becomes a questioning young thinker.
- The pull of art Explore the tension between inherited loyalties and Stephen’s hunger for an independent creative life.
Who will love it
This is for readers who love a growing mind on the page, schooldays and first loves, Irish argument, religion wrestled with at close range, and the question of how a writer is made.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A frightened boy learns the world through his senses
- A Christmas dinner splits the family over Parnell
- One unfair beating teaches him to speak up
- A fallen family drives him to dreams and defiance
- Shame and desire drive him into private sin
- A priest's sermons about hell break him open
- A priest offers him a calling and he refuses
- At university he builds a theory of beauty
- He refuses the nets of country, church and language
- The style grows up as Stephen does
Who’s who
- Stephen DedalusA sensitive Dublin boy who moves from school to university and wants to find his own way of life and art.
- Simon DedalusStephen's talkative, charming father, who sings, drinks, tells stories and slips ever deeper into debt.
- DanteThe family's strict, devout Mrs Riordan, who defends the church and stands against Parnell.
- Mr CaseyA fierce friend of the family who loyally mourns Parnell and argues bitterly with the church.
- Father DolanThe prefect of studies at Clongowes, whose cruel and mistaken beating of Stephen sends him to the rector.
- CranlyStephen's closest friend at university, a silent, watchful listener who tests his beliefs and urges him to spare his mother.
- DavinA gentle country student and keen nationalist who wants Stephen to join the Irish cause.
- LynchA sharp-tongued university friend who listens, sometimes unwillingly, as Stephen lays out his ideas about beauty.
Formats and delivery
- eBook
- On your phone, tablet or computer, once the book texts are online.
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- The same book in bigger, clearer type, once the book texts are online.
- Audiobook
- Read by Lucas Linden, complete. It opens once the recording is online.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 14 minutes, to read today.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
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- Large print paperback
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- Large print hardcover
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A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
by James Joyce · 1914
A boy flogged for broken glasses grows into a young man who refuses to serve church, home or country.
Medium level5–10 hours to readEnglish
Excellent
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In short
A small boy stands at the edge of a muddy football field, hands blue with cold, pretending to run. He is Stephen Dedalus.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man at a glance
- Reading time
- About 5 h 40 min4 h 30 min fast, 6 h 45 min slow
- Length
- 80,700 words5 chapters
- Pages
- 234 pages353 in large print
- Library level
- Medium longer sentences, everyday words
- First published
- 1914by James Joyce
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A frightened boy learns the world through his senses
The novel opens inside a child's head. Baby tuckoo hears a tale from his father, sings a song about a wild rose, and notices that a wet bed is warm and then cold. Joyce keeps the words small and plain. The reader sees only what Stephen sees.
At Clongowes Wood College, a boarding school run by Jesuits, Stephen is smaller and weaker than the other boys. He hangs at the edge of the football crowd and pretends to run. Everything at school feels damp, cold and foreign.
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Which edition is right for me
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas of the whole book in about 14 minutes. A good first look, or a refresher.
Details
- First published
- 1914
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 6 h 10 min
- Level
- Medium level
Cite this edition
Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/a-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-man.
Joyce, J. (2026). A portrait of the artist as a young man. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/a-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-man (Original work published 1914)
Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/a-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-man.
@book{joyce2026portrait,
author = {Joyce, James},
title = {A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/a-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-man},
note = {First published 1914}
}
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What is A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man about?
It follows Stephen Dedalus from early childhood at a Jesuit boarding school through Dublin adolescence and university. He wrestles with family, religion and country, and slowly decides that his life belongs to art.
Is A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man a true story?
It is a novel, but it draws closely on Joyce's own youth in Dublin. Joyce marked the manuscript Dublin, 1904 and Trieste, 1914. Stephen is not Joyce, though their schools and experiences are alike.
Why is the main character named Dedalus?
Dedalus echoes Daedalus, the legendary craftsman who built wings to escape a prison. Stephen hears his name as a prophecy of flight and of making something new, which links to the book's images of birds.
The author
James Joyce
1882–1941 · Irish novelist and poet
James Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, born in Dublin in 1882. He lived in Trieste, Zurich and Paris after leaving Ireland. He published Dubliners in 1914, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in 1916, and Ulysses in 1922. He died in Zurich in 1941.
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