The First Chapter of Gabriel Conroy, by Bret Harte

Abstract

Readers of Joyce know the character Gabriel Conroy from Dubliners’ final, longest, and most famous short story, “The Dead”. But the question whether they have read a novel called Gabriel Conroy will certainly make most of those readers frown. Yet before the protagonist of “The Dead” was created by Joyce, another character in literature had been called by this name, Captain Gabriel Conroy, from Bret Harte’s 1876 homonymous novel. By choosing that name for the protagonist of his short story, Joyce established a dialogue, although a possibly superficial one, between his work and that of Harte.