Mornings in Florence by John Ruskin 1894, inscribed by James Joyce 1898

The sixteen-year-old James Joyce used this book for a matriculation examination. It is inscribed by James Joyce, 9 September 1898. Acquired for the Tower by request and given by Lucia Joyce in May 1982.

In Mornings in Florence John Ruskin celebrates the baptistery in Florence as “the last building raised on the earth by the descendants of the workmen taught by Daedalus”. Ruskin goes on to describe Daedalus as “distinctively the power of finest human, as opposed to Divine, workmanship”. Sometime in 1899, and probably in connection with his reading of Ruskin, Joyce began to reference Daedalus as the prototype of the artist he most admired.