Dubliners is a collection of fifteen short stories written by James Joyce. It was first published in 1914 and is considered to be one of the most important works of literature from the early 20th Century. The stories depict Irish middle class life in and around Dublin, with a general theme of ‘epiphany’ running throughout. Joyce divided the collection into three parts: childhood, adolescence and maturity. Initially the stories are narrated by child protagonists, with each subsequent story focusing on the lives of progressively older subjects. Interestingly, many of the characters featured in this collection would appear in Joyce’s modernist masterpiece Ulysses.