James Joyce Garden, Paris

In the 13th arrondissement of Paris is a small garden dedicated to the Irish author James Joyce. Landscapers Michel Devigne and Christine Dalnoky created the garden in 1998. There is no memorial of Joyce in the gardens. 

James Joyce (1882-1941) lived in Paris for 20 years from the early 1920s. He wrote Finnegan’s Wake in Paris, taking 16 years to complete it. During German occupation of Paris, at the end of 1940, Joyce left for Zurich, where he died a month later. 

He first visited Paris as a young man in 1902, at the age of twenty, where he stayed at the Hotel Corneille. He returned 18 years later where he settled into a rented apartment. In fact, he moved apartments thirteen times. One of them was near the Pantheon, and near Sylvia Beach’s bookstore, Shakespeare and Company. Beach became his publisher when she published his most famous work, Ulysses. 

With his wife Nora, Joyce’s two main apartments in Paris were near the Invalides in the 7th arrondissement. From 1925-1931, they lived at 2 Square Robiac before moving to Edmond Valentin Street for four years.

MARTINA NICOLLSis an international aid and development consultant, and the authorof:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom(2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).