User talk:Cwserran
Publication History
[edit]According to Joyce scholar Florence L. Walsz, "The Sisters" is probably the story that James Joyce most revised. The story changed, in Walsz's view, as the author's concept for his yet to be written collection of short stories Dubliners became clearer.[1]
It was first published in the Irish Homestead at the request of George Russell who worked in the editorial department of the weekly paper in the summer of 1904. Russell wrote a letter to Joyce asking if he could "write anything simple, rural?, livemaking?, pathos?, which could be inserted so as not to shock the readers" (Letters, p. 43). [2] This included a payment of £1 and the freedom to sign it under any pseudonym he wished. Joyce accepted the conditions, and "The Sisters" was published August 13, 1904 under the name Stephen Dedalus in a section of the journal called "Our Weekly Story."
In a later version, published in Dubliners, while the plot remained the same, the diction was transformed from a romantic style to a more modernist one. The Homestead version spelled much out for the reader, while in the 1914 version, on the other hand, Joyce dropped the non-essential commentary leaving the facts to speak for themselves, a style Joyce called "scrupulous meanness."[citation needed] Readers are left to interpret and feel the bare facts for themselves. The style demands a greater engagement by the reader who must now provide more interpretation of the facts.