Princeton signs Frank Callanan’s biographical reassessment of James Joyce

Princeton University Press has signed world rights to James Joyce: A Political Life by Irish senior barrister and historian Frank Callanan from Ivan Mulcahy at MMB Creative. Publication will be in 2023.

Callanan’s book is billed as a “significant augmentation” of Richard Ellmann’s classic Joyce biography, shifting how Joyce is understood towards the political aspects of his work. Callanan will explore “the consistently neglected brilliance, acuity, and coherence of Joyce’s treatment of politics and modelling of history”.

Ben Tate, senior editor in humanities at Princeton UP, said: “My Princeton colleagues and I are enormously excited to publish such an ambitious and original biography, and one from an author who brings a rigorously fresh approach to James Joyce. The book is sure to make an impact across the Anglophone world and beyond.”