After staying for four months at 71 Rue du Cardinal Lemoine, the Joyce family returned to the hotel at 9 Rue de l’Université for a year from 1 October 1921 to 31 October 1922. On 1 November 1922, the Joyce family moved from the hotel into an apartment at 26 Avenue Charles Floquet, close to the Champs de Mars and the Eiffel Tower in the 7th arrondissement. In fact, it was a mere seven-minute walk to the Eiffel Tower and it seemed to loom over the apartment.
Sylvia Beach had published Ulysses in 1922 and Ernest Hemingway assisted getting the novel into America, since it had been banned for obscenity. However, it enabled Joyce to take a seven-month lease in this beautiful apartment. He didn’t undertake any writing until March 1923 – instead, Joyce focused on translations and promoting his novel.
He also had eye operations and dental operations which consumed much of his income.
In June 1923, when the lease expired, the Joyce family put their furniture in storage at Sylvia Beach’s Shakespeare and Company bookstore and took a vacation to the British seaside. Here he did some writing – two sentence became the beginning of his next novel, Finnegans Wake. However, before he had he title, it was called A Work in Progress.
James Joyce stayed here for seven months from 1 November 1922 to 18 June 1923.
James Joyce Paris Residence: Number 5 out of 18.
Photographer: Martina Nicolls