Collection Summary
Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin
Joyce, Lucia,
1907-1982
Lucia Joyce
Collection
1925-1995 (bulk 1935-1976)
Manuscript Collection MS-02235
1 box (.21
linear feet)
This small collection
of Lucia Joyce materials contains writings, correspondence, photographs,
printed materials, and video, dating from 1925 to 1995.
English, French,
German, and Italian.
Biographical Sketch
Lucia Anna Joyce, second child and only daughter
of Irish writer
James Joyce and
Nora Barnacle, was born July 26,
1907, in Trieste, Austria-Hungary. Her early life and
education was somewhat unstable as the impoverished Joyce family relocated
often. She attended several schools, moving between Trieste and Zurich until
1920, when the family settled and lived in and around
Paris.
In addition to her formal education,
Lucia Joyce studied piano, singing, and drawing.
At age fifteen, she began dance studies in Paris. She eventually performed
professionally, but discouraged with her progress and abilities, she abandoned
her dance career in
1929.
In her early twenties,
Lucia Joyce pursued several brief and unsuccessful
relationships. Among her romantic interests were
Samuel Beckett, and her drawing instructor,
Alexander Calder. Family and friends observed
increasingly erratic behavior from Joyce during this period, and in February
1932, she was institutionalized for a short time after
throwing a chair at her mother. She was engaged to
Alex Ponisovsky in March
1932, but wedding plans were abandoned after the further
decline of her mental health.
Lucia Joyce spent the next several years in and
out of sanitariums. She was seen by numerous doctors and analysts, including
Carl Jung, and was diagnosed at different times as
neurotic, schizophrenic, and manic-depressive. In
1935, she was committed to an asylum near Paris and
remained institutionalized for the rest of her life, dying December 12,
1982, in
St. Andrew's Hospital in Northampton, England.
Sources:
Ellmann, Richard.
James Joyce. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford
University Press,
1982
Shloss, Carol.
Lucia Joyce: To Dance in the Wake. New
York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
2003
Index Terms
People
Joyce, James, 1882-1941
-- Family.
Subjects
Novelists, Irish -- 20th
century -- Family relationships.
Document Types
Photographs.
Video
recordings.
Scope and Contents
This small collection of
Lucia Joyce materials contains writings,
correspondence, photographs, printed materials, and video, dating from
1925 to
1995.
Writings consist of two small notebooks of handwritten manuscripts by
Lucia Joyce headed "
My Dreams" (circa
1960) and "
Autobiography | My Life" (
1961). The latter notebook contains a typed transcription of
Lucia Joyce's
1958 manuscript "
The Real Life of James Joyce told by Lucia Joyce."
Digitized images of these three items are also available for viewing in the
Ransom Center Reading Room. Also present is a one-page fragment of a
handwritten address list and a single page of English, French, and German
handwriting, both by unidentified authors.
The bulk of the collection consists of correspondence to and from
Lucia Joyce, predominantly from Joyce to her
cousin,
Boezema (Schaurek) Dalimata. The outgoing
correspondence dates from
1935 to
1976, and includes two letters to Joyce's aunt (Dalimata's
mother),
Eileen (Joyce) Schaurek, and one fragment of a
letter to an unidentified recipient.
Incoming correspondence to Joyce dates from
1925 to
1935 and consists of one letter each from
Maria Jolas,
Helen Joyce, and
Harriet Weaver.
Third-party correspondence, dating from
1935 to
1996, is primarily to
Boezema Dalimata. Correspondents to Dalimata are:
Dr.
Pat M. Carr,
Padraic Colum,
Zlatko Gorjan,
Patricia (Barnacle) Hutton,
Maria Jolas,
Giorgio "George" Joyce,
Niny Rocco-Bergera, and
Harriet Weaver. Also include is a
1947 letter from
John Stanislaus "Stannie" Joyce to
Eileen (Joyce) Schaurek, and a
1950 letter to Schaurek from the
National Library of Ireland that accompanies a
typed translation of a
1935 letter from
James Joyce to
Lucia Joyce.
The correspondence was purchased from
Boezema Dalimata in the mid-1990s by rare book
dealer
J. Howard Woolmer and includes notes to Woolmer
from Dalimata and her daughter,
Kamilla Beghetto. One photocopy of a
1962 letter from
Lucia Joyce to
Eileen (Joyce) Schaurek was provided to the Ransom
Center by Beghetto.
Other materials provided to Woolmer by Dalimata include photographs of
James Joyce relatives and Joyce related events, a map of Dublin, a Summer
1985
James Joyce Quarterly, several printed
cards and announcements, newspaper clippings, and a VHS video cassette
containing parts two and three of the
1982 television production "
The World of James Joyce." The video has been transferred
to the Ransom Center Film Collection.
Acquisition:
Purchase, 1981 (R9309); Gift, 1996 (G13590)
Access:
Open for research
Processed by:
Stephen Mielke, 2007
The following Ransom Center collections also contain
Lucia Joyce related materials and are described in
archival inventories in the Ransom Center reading room or online at
http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/research/fa:
Gilbert, Stuart
Joyce, James
Lowell, Robert
Lucia Joyce Collection--Folder List
1
Writings
1
1
My Dreams, circa
1960
1
2
Autobiography | My Life,
1961
1
3
The Real Life of James Joyce told by Lucia Joyce,
1958-1959
1
4
Unidentified,
undated
1
Correspondence
1
5
Outgoing,
1935-1976, undated
1
6
Incoming,
1925-1935, undated
1
7
Third-party,
1935-1995
1
8
Photographs,
1963-1995, undated
1
9
Printed Material,
1985-1994, undated