A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - Feedbooks Edition

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a nearly complete rewrite of the abandoned novel Stephen Hero. Joyce partially destroyed the original manuscript in a fit of rage during an argument with Nora, who asserted that it would never be published. A Künstlerroman, or story of the personal development of an artist, Portrait is a heavily biographical coming-of-age novel in which Joyce depicts a conflicted young man's gradual growth into artistic self-consciousness.
The main character, Stephen Dedalus, is in many ways based upon Joyce himself.Some hints of the techniques Joyce frequently employed in later works, such as stream of consciousness, interior monologue, and references to a character's psychic reality rather than to his external surroundings, are evident throughout this novel.