A Young Poet

In the years immediately following Joyce’s graduation, his poems began to appear in English and Irish publications, such as the Venture and Dana. Joyce had hoped that Dana would instead accept a piece of prose titled “A Portrait of the Artist.” He reportedly cornered the magazine’s coeditor John Eglinton at his day job at the National Library and stood by while Eglinton read the piece. Eglinton recollected that he passed it back to Joyce, saying it was “incomprehensible.” According to Joyce, the Dana editors had admired the style but could not abide the references to sex. Both Dana and a supercilious librarian named John Eglinton appear in Ulysses.