Consistently ranked as one of the best novels ever written, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is Irish author James Joyce's most autobiographical work. It tells the story of the intellectual and philosophical journey of Stephen Dedalus, a young Catholic man and later an artist, as he questions his upbringing in the Church and Irish society. A coming of age story told in Joyce's distinctive modernist style, the novel was hugely controversial upon its publication, but has ultimately found a place as a universally praised offering from a master of English literature.