Best books set in Scotland, Ireland, Wales and England

UK&Ireland_Destination-Reads_Article-header

Reading lists

14 books set in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland

Flags of the 37 countries participating in Eurovision displayed as books along the staff of sheet music.

Eurovision-A-must-read-book-from-every-country_Online-Desktop_Penguin

What to read next

The ultimate Eurovision-inspired reading list

A drawing of a stretched-out person holding onto a copy of Ulysses against a blue background

Main20Image20-201800×1200.jpg

Features

How to read – and keep reading – Ulysses

An illustration of a woman sitting and listening to an audiobook through headphones.

Penguin20-20AUDIO20WEEK20-20Classic20audiobooks20everyone20should20listen20to20-20120-20main-image-1800×1200.jpg

Audiobooks everyone should listen to, as chosen by our readers

An illustration of five literary characters' silhouettes against a green-grass background

Rule-Of-Six-Main.jpg

Books characters who’d be perfect for your ‘rule of six’ hangout

Many writers through history have relied on unusual rituals to get the job done.

Main-Unusual-Writing-Habits-1800×1200-static.jpg

The most unusual writing rituals of famous authors

From Alex Garland to James Joyce, Yaa Gyasi to Kate Chopin, here are some of the most memorable beach scenes captured in literature. 

ACBestBeachScenes.jpg

The most memorable beach scenes in literature

Exiles

A neglected landmark of modern theatre that explores the byzantine complexities of marriage with the honesty of genius

James Joyce was born in Dublin on 2 February 1882, the eldest of ten children in a family which, after brief prosperity, collapsed into poverty. He was none the less educated at the best Jesuit schools and then at University College, Dublin, and displayed considerable academic and literary ability. Although he spent most of his adult life outside Ireland, Joyce's psychological and fictional universe is firmly rooted in his native Dublin, the city which provides the settings and much of the subject matter for all his fiction. He is best known for his landmark novel Ulysses (1922) and its controversial successor Finnegans Wake (1939), as well as the short story collection Dubliners (1914) and the semi-autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916). James Joyce died in Zürich, on 13 January 1941.

After ten long years spent away from Dublin, Richard, Bertha and their young illegitimate son Archie are back home. Despite expectations of comfort and domesticity, the couple's return to the place where they first met triggers an existential questioning, an anxiousness which is exacerbated by meetings with old friends and lovers. 
 
James Joyce's only surviving play, Exiles builds upon one of his most famous short stories, 'The Dead', to provide a profound exploration of jealousy, doubt and the complexity of human desire.

Poems

It is only James Joyce's towering genius as a novelist that has led to his comparative neglect as a poet. And yet his poems not only occupy a pivotal position in Joyce's career, they are also magnificently assured achievements in their own right. 'Chamber Music' is an extraordinary début, fusing a broad swathe of styles with characteristically sharp irony and joyful verbal exuberance. 'Pomes Penyeach' confronts painful personal issues of adultery, jealousy and betrayal and so paves the way for the more detached and fully realized treatment of these feelings in Joyce's masterpiece, Ulysses. Also included here is 'Ecce Puer', written for his new-born grandson, as well as juvenilia, satires, translations, limericks and a parody of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Annotated Students' Edition

Ulysses

For Joyce, literature is 'the eternal affirmation of the spirit of man'. Written between 1914 and 1921, Ulysses has survived bowdlerisation, legal action and bitter controversy. An undisputed modernist classic, its ceaseless verbal inventiveness and astonishing wide-ranging allusions confirm its standing as an imperishable monument to the human condition. 
 
A new edition of one of the twentieth century's greatest novels, using the original 1922 text - now the preferred text of Joyce's masterwork - this annotated Student Edition includes extensive notes, line numbers and an introduction by world-renowned Joycean scholar, Andrew Gibson.

Everybody knows that Ulysses is the greatest novel of the century

James Joyce was born in Dublin on 2 February 1882, the eldest of ten children in a family which, after brief prosperity, collapsed into poverty. He was none the less educated at the best Jesuit schools and then at University College, Dublin, and displayed considerable academic and literary ability. Although he spent most of his adult life outside Ireland, Joyce's psychological and fictional universe is firmly rooted in his native Dublin, the city which provides the settings and much of the subject matter for all his fiction. He is best known for his landmark novel Ulysses (1922) and its controversial successor Finnegans Wake (1939), as well as the short story collection Dubliners (1914) and the semi-autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916). James Joyce died in Zürich, on 13 January 1941.

Penguin Classics

Following the events of one single day in Dublin, the 16th of June 1904, and what happens to the characters Stephen Dedalus, Leopold Bloom and his wife Molly, Ulysses is a monument to the human condition. It has survived censorship, controversy and legal action, and even been deemed blasphemous, but remains an undisputed modernist classic: ceaselessly inventive, garrulous, funny, sorrowful, vulgar, lyrical and ultimately redemptive. It confirms Joyce's belief that literature 'is the eternal affirmation of the spirit of man'. 
 
This new edition is based on the original 1922 edition, now the preferred text of Joyce's masterwork, and includes an introduction by world-renowned Joycean scholar, Andrew Gibson.

Dubliners

Dubliners, Joyce's first major work and written when he was only twenty-five, brought his city to the world for the first time. His stories are rooted in the rich detail of Dublin life, portraying ordinary, often defeated lives with unflinching realism. From 'The Sisters', a vivid portrait of childhood faith and guilt, to 'Araby', a timeless evocation of the inexplicable yearnings of adolescence, to 'The Dead', in which Gabriel Conroy is gradually brought to a painful epiphany regarding the nature of his existence, Joyce draws a realistic and memorable cast of Dubliners together in an powerful exploration of overarching themes. Writing of social decline, sexual desire and exploitation, corruption and personal failure, he creates a brilliantly compelling, unique vision of the world and of human experience.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

There is nothing more vivid or beautiful in all Joyce's writing. It has the searing clarity of truth ... but is rich with myth and symbol

The portrayal of Stephen Dedalus's Dublin childhood and youth, his quest for identity through art and his gradual emancipation from the claims of family, religion and Ireland itself, is also an oblique self-portrait of the young James Joyce and a universal testament to the artist's 'eternal imagination'. Both an insight into Joyce's life and childhood, and a unique work of modernist fiction, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a novel of sexual awakening, religious rebellion and the essential search for voice and meaning that every nascent artist must face in order to fully come into themselves.

James Joyce

Seamus Deane

Brian Fox

Joyce's final work, Finnegans Wake, is his masterpiece of the night, as Ulysses is of the day. Supreme linguistic virtuosity conjures up the dark underground worlds of sexuality and dream. Joyce undermines traditional storytelling and all official forms of English and confronts the different kinds of betrayal &ndash; cultural, political and sexual &ndash; that he saw at the heart of Irish history. Dazzlingly inventive, with passages of great lyrical beauty and humour, Finnegans Wake remains one of the most remarkable works of the twentieth century.

James Joyce

Finnegans Wake

Select a format:

Pre-order:

Summary

More books from this author