James Joyce was born in Dublin on 2 February 1882. His childhood was affected by a permanent change of place of residence, lack of money and a strict catholic education. In 1902, after James Joyce had completed school and university, he escaped what he felt as a back-crushing constriction of his existence: He pretended to enroll in university in Paris. Joyce stayed in the pulsating cultural metropolis for a short time only and returned to Dublin, mostly because his mother had fallen seriously ill. In 1904 James Joyce met his later partner and wife Nora Barnacle, with whom he left his home once and forever. Together they lived in, among others, Triest, London and Paris in the course of their life. In Zurich, James Joyce's last place of residence, the artist died in 1941. James Joyce wrote first literary pieces as early as in his childhood and adolescence, among them short poems and plays. In 1914 the collection of short stories "Dubliners" was released, which James Joyce had written between 1904 and 1907. In 1916 the autobiographic short novel with the title "Portrait of the artist as a young man" followed, this work, in return, was the basis for the masterwork "Ulysses" (written between 1914 and 1921). In 1939 the novel "Finnegans Wake" was eventually released, in terms of its form's and content's fragmentariness, it is undoubtedly the highlight of James Joyce's oeuvre as well as of history of literature in general.