A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Joyce's autobiographical first novel, was serialized between 1914 and 1915 in Ezra Pound's magazine Egoist. One of the most influential early modernist works, the novel took much critical attention away from Dubliners because of its radical innovations in form, and it is perhaps more accessible than Joyce's famous Ulysses.

Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts, a domestic drama in which an ill young man returns to his mother's home and begins to uncover some of their dark family history, was very influential over Joyce's efforts to forge a new literary style. Written in 1881, Ghosts is a landmark in modern literature.

Virginia Woolf's first novel The Voyage Out, published in 1915 but revised and republished in 1920, is the story of a young woman's emigration from England to South America and her confrontation with a patriarchal society. It shares...