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The chronology of Ulysses relative to A Portrait has not been well-understood:
Jan 1904 to Jun 1905: first 25 chapters of Stephen Hero (out of planned 63) written sequentially [info]
Jul 1905 to Sep 1907: drops SH and works only on Dubliners
Sep 1906: 1st idea for Ulysses (actual writing won't start for 8 years)
"In Rome, when I had finished about half of the Portrait, I realised that the Odyssey had to be the sequel, and I began to write Ulysses." [to Borach, in Willard Potts p70]
08Sep 1907: announces plan to rewrite Stephen Hero (probably after brooding on it all year)
20Sep 1907: finishes Dubliners (The Dead)
Nov 1907: announces Ulysses will be short book ('a Dublin Peer Gynt') [e265]
Nov 1907: rewrites ch1 of PoA (immediate re-rewrite in December)
Apr 1908: ch3 of PoA rewritten
1908-13: trials and cataclysms
1910: compiles Trieste notebook with images for continuous PoA and U
[more detailed: timeline#1912]
Aug 1912: still plans to finish novel (SH/PoA)
Sep 1912: Dubliners publication halted; JAJ writes 'Gas from a Burner' (PoA1-3 partly burnt-- not SH)
Nov 1912: lectures on Shakespeare
Nov 1913: notes for Exiles [etext]
Dec 1913: faircopies PoA1-3 for Pound's Egoist
Mar 1914: Ulysses begun, by one of JAJ's reckonings
...shed his blood for all men they have no need of other aspersion.Doherty's jibes flashed to and fro through the torpor of his mind and he thought without mirth of his friend's face, equine and pallid, and of his pallid hair, grained and hued like oak. He had tried to receive coldly these memories of his friend's boisterous humour, feeling that coarseness of speech was not a blasphemy of the spirit but a coward's mask, but in the end the troop of swinish images broke down his reserve and went trampling through his memory, followed by his laughter:
I'm the queerest young fellow that ever you heard.
My mother's a jew, my father's a bird.
With Joseph the joiner I cannot agree
So here's to disciples and Calvary!
My methods are new and are causing surprise.
To make the blind see I throw dust in their eyes...But the echo of his laughter had been the remembrance of Doherty, standing on the steps of his house the night before, saying:
-- And on Sunday I consume the particle. Christine, semel in die. The mockery of it all! But it's for the sake of the poor aunt. God, we must be human first. Doherty meets his afflicted aunt. I am writing a mystery-play in half an act. Scene: Heaven. Enter two bonzes from Leitrim wearing blue spectacles. From Leitrim! "What was it at all? Was it electric light or the aurora borealis?" "That was himself." "Glory be to God! It is the grandest thing I ever saw." I think that's a lovely touch. The mockery of it! Ireland secretes priests: that's my new phrase. I must go. A woman waits for me. God, the humanity of Whitman! I contain all. I embrace all. Farewell. Did you notice Yeats's new touch with the hand up. It's the Roman salute. Salve! Pip, pip! O, a lovely mummer! Dedalus, we must retire to the tower, you and I. Let us go then! Our lives are precious. I'll try to touch the aunt. We are the super-artists. Dedalus and Doherty have left Ireland for the Omphalos--
The rank smell of fried herrings filled the kitchen and the bare table was strewn with greasy plates to which glutinous fish-bones and crusts were stuck by a congealing white sauce. Clammy knives and forks were abandoned here and there. A big soot-coated kettle which had been drained of the last dregs of cocoa, sat in the midst of the disorder beside a large jam-jar still half-full of the oatmeal water which had served for milk. Under the table the tortoiseshell cat was chewing ravenously at a mess of charred fish heads and eggshells heaped on a square of brown paper.
His mother, flushed and red-eyed sat by the range. Stephen, weary of the strife of tongues, leaned against the japanned wall of the fireplace. Noises and cries and laughter echoed in the narrow yard: and from time to time a nose was flattened against the window pane, fingers tapped mockingly and a young voice, faint and high in the dim evening, asked if the genius had finished his phrenology.
-- It is all over those books you read. I knew you would lose your faith. I'll burn every one of them--
-- If you had not lost your faith-- said Stephen-- you would burn me along with the books--
Jun 1914: Dubliners finally published
Jul-Aug 1914: Giacomo Joyce written?
Aug 1914: Exiles begun
Apr 1915: Exiles finished
Jun 1915: 1st drafts of Telemachus & Nestor (?) done, Proteus begun after 200 hrs of thought
16Jun 1915: JAJ tells Stannie that U will have 22 episodes: 4 + 15 + 3
if the second episode of this 4-chapter Telemachia took place in the library [arguments] then the earliest version of what later became ch9-Scylla must already have been drafted
28Jun 1915: move from Trieste to Zurich
30Jun 1915: U is "continuation of PoA after 3 years"
Sept 1915: PoA4-5 finished (7 years after PoA3) leaving Stephen exactly where he needed to be for Ulysses 'sequel'
10Oct 1916: already drafted for Ulysses: part of middle (Scylla) and end (Ithaca and Penelope in a much simpler form)
if this version of Scylla was simply the old ch2 relocated, then Joyce had abandoned the 4-episode Telemachia by this date. but PoA4-5 were likely composed with the 4-ep version in mind.
Dec 1916: Portrait finally published
Feb 1917: Harriet Weaver starts support (anonymously)
Jun 1917: preparing to write Eolus (ie, it's taken him 2 years to rethink Scylla and draft Bloom's first three episodes)
Nov 1917: delivers Ulysses ch1 (in essentially finished form) as start of monthly serial publication in Little Review (ie, basic plan fully formulated)
18May 1918: JAJ tells HSW U will have 17 episodes (3 + 11 + 3)
Stephen Hero Dubliners Ulysses Portrait Exiles
Feb 1904: begun
Jul 1904: begun
Aug 1904: serial pub
Jan 1905: pub stopped
Jun 1905: set aside
Sep 1906: conceived
May 1907: [Chamber Music published]
Jul 1907: conceived?
Sep 1907: abandoned finished conceived
Nov 1907: 'short book' ch1 begun
Apr 1908: ch3 done
[gap]
Sep 1912: 'burnt' burnt
Nov 1913: notes
Dec 1913: ch1-3 typed
Feb 1914: serial pub
Mar 1914: begun
Jun 1914: published
Jul 1914: [Giacomo Joyce written?]
Aug 1914: begun
Apr 1915: finished?
Jun 1915: Telemachia
Sep 1915: finished finished?
Dec 1916: published
Mar 1918: serial pub
May 1918: published
Feb 1922: published
1927: given to S Beach
1938: sold to Harvard
1944: published
Stephen Hero Dubliners Ulysses Portrait Exiles
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