Dubliners Richard Ellmann has argued, "Joyce claims importance by claiming nothing" His characters' personalities can only be observed because they are not explicitly told. The collection progresses chronologically, beginning with stories of youth and progressing in age to culminate in "The Dead". Emphasis is laid upon the specific geographic details of Dublin, for example, road names and buildings feature extensively. Dubliners Dubliners is a collection of fifteen short stories by James Joyce, first published in 1914. They form a naturalistic depiction of Irish middle class life in and around Dublin in the early years of the 20th century. The stories were
Ulysses (novel) in Joyce's mind. At school he wrote an essay on the character, entitled "My Favourite Hero". Joyce told Frank Budgen that he considered Ulysses the only all-round character in literature. He thought about calling his short-story collection "Dubliners" (1914) by the name "Ulysses in Dublin", but the idea grew from a story written in 1906 to a "short book" in 1907, to the vast novel that he began in 1914. The action of the novel takes place from one side of Dublin Bay to the other, opening in Sandycove to the South of the city and closing on Howth Head