The Joyces came to Ireland in the late twelfth century as Norman invaders, but cast aside the sword to dominate the commercial life of the island as wealthy merchants.
Assimilating the native religion and culture they became victims of those who tried to annihilate it, but they survived and have thrived through a rich variety of endeavours.
In the world of literature James Joyce, born in 1882, was the celebrated Irish writer ranked as having been among the most influential writers of the twentieth century.
His classic works include Dubliners, first published in 1914, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Finnegans Wake and Ulysses.
Born in Co. Limerick in 1830, Robert Dwyer Joyce was not only a gifted poet but also played a vital role in collecting and rescuing from obscurity a number of old Irish songs.
Chronicled here are the dramatic and colourful lives and times of the Joyces.
Joyce Irish Clan Name Mini-Book Excerpt
"A particularly notorious bearer of the Joyce name was William Joyce, born in New York in 1906 to an Irish father and an English mother. The family returned to Galway, in Ireland, in Joyce’s childhood, and later to England, where Joyce joined the British Union of Fascists in 1932.
On the outbreak of war, facing arrest and detention as a Nazi sympathiser, he and his wife fled to Germany and he became a radio propagandist for Germany’s English service.
Dubbed Lord Haw-Haw by his mocking British listeners, he was captured after the war and, found guilty of treason, hanged in 1946."
