Finn Fordham is a lecturer at the University of Nottingham, a graduate of the University of Cambridge, and carried out doctoral work with Professor Steven Connor at the University of London on the influence that Lucia Joyce's breakdown had on the composition of Finnegans Wake. He also writes on "genetic" criticism and reviews contemporary fiction. He has held British Academy and Leverhulme awards for his research and is currently working on comparing writing processes among Modernist writers.

"Fordham provides readings of Joyce's language with an improvisational air that belies the sheer erudition informing his writing. Like the Wake itself, there are flashes of insight and brilliance." --Forum for Modern Language Studies

"Sophisticated, erudite, and elegant... it is clear that we have here one of those landmark works on Joyce's Finnegans Wake. Among its many accomplishments Fordham's book demonstrates to a wide audience the procedure and potential productivity of genetic criticism and shows how this approach both stimulates and authorizes new ways of reading the Wake. The readings themselves are a marvelously layered consideration of words, sentences, and passages that illuminate how meaning becomes enlarged, complicated, shifted by revision. At the same time Fordham tracks a complex and fascinating thesis with theoretical implications. A brilliant job and lots of fun to boot."-- Margot Norris, The James Joyce Literary Supplement

"Finn Fordham provides dedicated readers, more than true neophytes, courage here to begin yet another reading." --Craig Monk MLR

"Fordham's book is one of the most engaging and original studies of Finnegans Wake to appear in a very long time...Fordham has done Joyce's readers a great service by opening up this Pandora's box of inquiry."--Jed Deppman, Review of English Studies

"Wonderful. It does the most difficult thing - it renders the book more interesting without making it (or Joyce) sound too coherent. It has been really illuminating for me, a great pleasure to read."--Adam Phillips, General Editor of the Penguin Freud

"A brilliant study of Joyce's drafting of Finnegans Wake, interesting for its own sake and offering an illuminating approach to reading the text. One of the best books on the Wake to have appeared in the last decade or two, it will appeal to all students of Joyce's work. The introduction will be valuable for those who are new to the Wake, but those who know it well will also find Finn Fordham's able survey extremely useful."--Derek Attridge

"Certainly one of the best books on the Wake yet published...enjoyable and useful: an attempt to experience the Wake on and with its own terms." --James Joyce Quarterly