Unknown photographer
Lucia Joyce, Paris, 1925
Gelatin silver print
Courtesy of the Poetry Collection of the University Libraries, University at Buffalo, the State University of New York
Lucia Joyce, the daughter of James Joyce and Nora Barnacle, was born in 1907 and died in 1982. She had a nomadic upbringing, moving between Trieste, Zurich, and Paris, where she studied dancing. She was tall, she was graceful, and as a dancer, she developed an individual style. She gave several performances between 1926 and 1929 and the Paris Times wrote about her, “Lucia Joyce is her father's daughter—she has James Joyce’s enthusiasm, energy, and a not yet determined amount of his genius.When she reaches her full capacity for rhythmic dancing, James Joyce may yet be known as his daughter's father.”
In 1929, however, Lucia decided to give up dancing and she began to create decorative alphabets and designs, sometimes for her father's work. She created an edition of James Joyce's poems, Pomes Penyeach which was referred to simply as Lucia’s book and she also found a publisher for her illustrated, Chaucer A.B.C. in 1936. In 1934, she was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and for many years she underwent treatment. From 1950 until her death, she lived at St. Andrews Hospital in Northampton in England.