The History of Literature Podcast is a member of the Podglomerate Network and Lit Hub Radio.

Hello, everyone. This is Jack in 2024. We have a trip back to the archives today for you,

part one of our two-part episode on The Dead by James Joyce, which we brought to you in December of 2017.

In that episode, I listened to some music and talked about my own Christmas traditions in Wisconsin

with my grandparents. And then we dove into the great James Joyce masterpiece, reading the entire

story plus some commentary. The full episode is in the archives if you want to hear the music

and the Christmas traditions in Wisconsin and all of that stuff.

For this encore edition, we are presenting just the story and the commentary ad-free.

Enjoy. The Dead

Lily, the caretaker's daughter, was literally run off her feet.

Hardly had she brought one gentleman into the little pantry behind the office on the ground floor

and helped him off with his overcoat, and the wheezy hall doorbell clanged again,

and she had to scamper along the bare hallway to let in another guest.

It was well for her she had not to attend to the ladies also,

but Miss Kate and Miss Julia had thought of that,

and had converted the bathroom upstairs into a ladies' dressing room. Miss Kate and Miss Julia were there,

gossiping and laughing and fussing, walking after each other to the head of the stairs,

peering down over the banisters, and calling down to Lily to ask her who had come.

It was always a great affair, the Mrs. Morkan's annual dance.

Everybody who knew them came to it, members of the family, old friends of the family,

the members of Julia's choir, any of Kate's pupils that were grown up enough, and even some of

Mary Jane's pupils, too. Never once had had fallen flat. For years and years it had gone off

...