Timeline

Aug02: JAJ tells AE he expects to finish a 'comedy' in 5 years

Mar03: "My book of songs will be published in the spring of 1907. My first comedy about five years later. My 'Esthetic' about five years later again."

1903: JAJ has composed dozens of factual poetic vignettes for a collection he calls "Epiphany" [etext]

19Nov03: JAJ proposes to Francis Skeffington they start a daily newspaper focusing only on the arts, called 'The Goblin'

07Jan04: JAJ writes "A Portrait of the Artist" and submits it to Eglinton and Ryan for the 'Dana'

02Feb04: JAJ starts cranking out 'Stephen Hero' at a rate of two chapters per month

02Feb-10Feb04 ch1 written at JSJ's Cabra house (Curran calls it lyrical, with obscure reveries on distant happenings)

Mar04: JAJ training voice for Feis Ceoil; moves out of Cabra house

SH probably allotted six chapters to Stephen's pre-Belvedere years, but almost certainly used the conventional narrative voice.

JAJ compiles list of characters

spring 1904: ch8 (transfer to Belvedere)

10Jun: meets Nora

22Jun: black eye

23Jun04: "a bulky wad of manuscript... clearly written script with remarkably few corrections or interlineations... 9.25 by 7.25 inch... neat and easily legible" probably the first 9 or 10 chapters, already about 300 pages before the hellfire retreat

July 1904: JAJ makes deal with Gogarty to share Tower for a year while he finishes SH, doing housekeeping instead of paying rent

13Jul: funeral of Mat Kane

15Jul04: "finished the awful chapter-- 102 pages" (Hellfire sermon?)

mid-July 1904: JAJ gives AE the first ten or eleven chapters

Aug? "Holy Office"

working on Dubliners

Sep04: JAJ tells Gogarty he plans 63 chapters total

09-15Sep: Tower stay

15Sep: ch12 begun

08Oct: exile w/NB

20Oct04: finishes ch12

Nov04: Joyce reads Aquinas for arguments

19Nov04: "I have not written much of the novel-- only the end of the 11th [sic] chapter in Zurich."

12Dec04: ch13 finished

28Dec: ch15

13Jan05: "finished Chap. XV and am now at Chap XVI"; sends Stannie ch12-14

chapters 14-18 were written in Pola between Dec and Feb, mostly at cafes, while working 16 hours/week at Berlitz, studying German, translating Moore's Celibates into Italian with Francini Bruni, gaining weight, getting glasses, and cultivating the appearance of a respectable professor

Dec04-Jan05: ch15 finished, shift from Dubliners back to SH

 07Feb05: ch16 finished

Feb05: ch17; JAJ starts wearing glasses again

28Feb05: "I am not quite satisfied with the title 'Stephen Hero' and am thinking of restoring the original title of the article 'A Portrait of the Artist' or perhaps better 'Chapters in the Life of a Young Man'."

15Mar05: ch18 finished "The U. College episode will take about ten chapters"; JAJ and Nora relocate from Pola to Trieste

04Apr05: ch20 finished

Apr05: ch21

Apr-May05: ch22

07Jun05: ch24

Jun05: ch25

13Mar06 "914 pages... 25 chapters, about half the book... 150,000 words"

08Sep07: JAJ tells Stanislaus that as soon as he completes "The Dead" he plans to rewrite SH completely, omitting all the first chapters and beginning with Stephen Daly going to school

15Dec07: JAJ complains to Stannie that the first revised draft still begins "at a railway station like most college stories; there were three companions in it...."

07Apr08: finished third chapter PoA