First published in 1916, James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is his first novel. A Kunstlerroman, 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).