Stephen Hero - A Part of the First Draft of a Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Book excerpt: This antiquarian book contains "Stephen Hero", a part of the first draft of James Joyce's seminal book, "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man". This manuscript was offered for sale in 1935 by the first publisher of "Ulysses"; Miss Sylvia Beach, in her Parisian bookshop 'Shakespeare and Company'. "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" is a famous autobiographical novel written by Joyce and published posthumously. It traces the intellectual awakening of young Stephen Dedalus, the fictional alter ego of Joyce about whom H. G. Wells once wrote: "one believes in Stephen Dedalus as one believes in few characters in fiction.'' Many antiquarian books such as this are increasingly hard to come by and expensive, and it is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern edition complete with a specially commissioned new biography of the author.