First published in 1916, James Joyce's "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" is his first novel. A Künstlerroman, or "artist's novel" it describes the life of Steven Dedalus from childbirth, through his schooling and finally to his full blossoming as an artist. Loosely based on the author's life and ritten in a mix of third person and indirect speech, the novel served as a basis for Joyce's more experimental novels "Ulysses" (1922) and Finnegan's Wake (1939).