Ellmann's Joyce

The Biography of a Masterpiece and Its Maker

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Pub Date May 06 2025 | Archive Date May 06 2025

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Description

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.

Zachary Leader is Emeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of Roehampton in London and author of The Life of Kingsley Amis and the two-volume Life of Saul Bellow, alongside multiple works of criticism and scholarship. He is General Editor of The Oxford History of Life-Writing and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

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...


Advance Praise

“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 Ellman'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



“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...


Available Editions

EDITION Hardcover
ISBN 9780674248397
PRICE $35.00 (USD)
PAGES 448

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