Michael Joyce

Michael Joyce

Writer and official at the Bank of England. Born in Saltburn, Yorkshire, Michael Joyce went to sea for four years with the merchant navy from 1919. On his return he worked as an official at the Bank of England (where he remained for many years) in London. In 1927, he married the daughter of the publisher of the Athenaeum. He contributed to literary periodicals from 1929, and a translation of his story "˜Perchance to Dream' appeared in the Frankfurter Zeitung in 1931 bylined to James Joyce. Incensed, JJ threatened the newspaper with litigation. Michael Joyce subsequently published popular histories such as Ordeal at Lucknow (1938) and biographies of Edward Gibbon (1953) and Samuel Johnson (1955) among others as well as the supernatural tale Peregrine Pieram (1936). His 1935 translation of Plato's Symposium was for many years reprinted in the Everyman's Library. John Simpson