Dr Luca Crispi (UCD): ‘James Joyce and Paul Léon: A Friendship at Work’

This paper will give some background to and examples of the working relationship between James Joyce and Paul Léon, which was built first and always on friendship. It will examine how Léon ensured that Joyce continued to write Finnegans Wake, despite his mounting concerns with his health and family, by acting as a shield against Joyce’s publishers and the rest of the world. It concludes with a brief discussion of their escape from Paris, Joyce’s early death, and Léon’s heroic efforts to rescue Joyce’s books and manuscripts which ultimately led to his tragic murder by the Nazis.

Dr Luca Crispi is Associate Professor in James Joyce Studies and Modernism in the School of English, Drama and Film and in the UCD Centre for Research for James Joyce Studies. His monograph - Joyce's Creative Process and the Construction of Characters in "Ulysses": Becoming the Blooms - was published by Oxford University Press in 2015. He is a founding co-editor with Anne Fogarty of the Dublin James Joyce Journal (2008-17) and teaches on the Irish Literature as well as the Modern and Contemporary Literature MA programmes. He is also co-director of the Dublin James Joyce Summer School and a Board Member of the International James Joyce Foundation. He was the co-editor with Catherine Fahy of The Joyce Studies 2004 Series (National Library of Ireland, 2004-5), and with Sam Slote (TCD) of How Joyce Wrote "How Joyce Wrote "Finnegans Wake": A Chapter-by-Chapter Genetic Guide (Wisconsin UP, 2007). He is currently working on a monograph entitled The Genesis of “Ulysses”, and is recently edited with Alexis and Anna Maria Léon a collection of archival material: James Joyce and Paul L. Léon: The Story of a Friendship Revisited (Bloomsbury; 2022).

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