Dubliners

by James Joyce

Category: Fiction

Status: Available

Source: Public Domain — Project Gutenberg

About This Book

"Dubliners" by James Joyce is a collection of fifteen short stories written from 1904 to 1907 and published in 1914. Set in early twentieth-century Dublin, these stories portray Irish middle-class life through a lens of paralysis and disillusionment. Joyce holds up a mirror to his countrymen, exploring themes of nationalism, Catholicism, and British rule. The collection progresses chronologically from childhood through public life, with characters experiencing moments of sudden self-understanding. Each story captures lives marked by stagnation, failed dreams, and the struggle for spiritual liberation in a city caught at history's crossroads. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

About the Author

Irish · 1882–1941

He was one of the boldest writers of the 1900s. His most famous book, Ulysses, tells the story of one day in Dublin in great detail.

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DUBLINERS

by James Joyce

Contents

The Sisters An Encounter Araby Eveline After the Race Two Gallants The Boarding House A Little Cloud Counterparts Clay A Painful Case Ivy Day in the Committee Room A Mother Grace The Dead

THE SISTERS

There was no hope for him this time: it was the third stroke. Night after night I had passed the house (it was vacation time) and studied the lighted square of window: and night after night I had found it lighted in the same way, faintly and evenly. If he was dead, I thought, I would see the reflection of candles on the darkened blind for I knew that two candles must be set at the head of a corpse. He had often said to me: “I am not long for this world,” and I had thought his words idle. Now I kn

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About This Edition

This edition of Dubliners by James Joyce is catalogued on Libreya under Fiction and runs approximately 67,635 words — about 338 minutes of reading at an average pace. It is sourced from Project Gutenberg, the world's oldest digital library of public domain literature, founded in 1971 by Michael Hart, and every text on Libreya has been verified to be free of copyright restrictions in the United States. You can view the original Project Gutenberg edition here.

On Libreya, the text has been carefully formatted for comfortable reading on any screen — with consistent chapter navigation, adjustable font sizes, and four reading themes: light, sepia, dark, and night mode. Your reading position is saved automatically when you sign in, so you can pick up exactly where you left off across any device. The original text has not been altered in any way; what you read here is the same work as it appeared in its original published form.

About Classic Fiction

Classic fiction represents the highest achievements of literary imagination. The novels in this genre have shaped how generations of readers understand human nature, society, and the fundamental questions of existence. Reading 19th and early 20th-century novels offers far more than historical interest: these stories explore love, ambition, morality, and identity with an insight that remains startlingly relevant today. Authors like Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Austen, Hardy, and Dickens wrote for readers much like us — people trying to make sense of a complicated world — and their observations on class, relationships, power, and conscience carry across centuries with barely diminished force. Classic fiction is also where the novel as an art form reached some of its greatest heights: innovative narrative structures, deeply realized characters, and prose styles that reward slow, attentive reading. These are not museum pieces. They are living works that continue to be discussed, adapted, and argued over because they capture something essential and enduring about human experience.