Don Gifford's annotations to Joyce's great modern classic comprise a specialized encyclopedia that will inform any reading of "Ulysses". The suggestive potential of minor details was enormously fascinating to Joyce, and the precision of his use of detail is a most important aspect of his literary method. The annotations in this volume illuminate details which are not in the public realm for most of us. The annotations gloss place names, define slang terms, give capsule histories of institutions and political and cultural movements and figures, supply bits of local and Irish legend and lore, explain religious nomenclature and practices, trace literary allusions and references to other cultures. Annotations are keyed not only to the reading text of the critical edition of "Ulysses", but to the standard 1961 Random House edition, and the current Modern Library and Vintage texts.

In James Joyce's early work, as in "Ulysses" and "Finnegans Wake," meanings are often concealed in obscure allusions and details of veiled suggestive power. Consistent recognition of these hidden signififances in "Dubliners" and "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" would require an encyclopedic knowledge of life in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Dublin such as few readers possess. Now this substantially revised and expanded edition of Don Gifford's "Notes to Joyce: "Dubliners" and "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man"" puts the requisite knowledge at the disposal of scholars, students, and general readers.
An ample introductory essay supplies the historical, biographical, and geographical background for "Dubliners" and "Portrait." The annotations that follow gloss place names, define slang terms, recount relevant gossip, give capsule histories of institutions and political and cultural movements and figures, supply bits of local and Irish legend and lore, explain religious nomenclature and practices, and illuminate cryptic allusions to literature, theology, philosophy, science and the arts.
Professor Gifford's labors in gathering these data into a single volume have resulted in an invaluable source-book for all students of Joyce's art.