In this collection of masterful stories, steeped in realism, Joyce renders an exacting portrait of his native city and how it reflects a general decline of Irish culture and civilization. Although The Dubliners was completed in 1905, British and Irish publishers and printers found it offensive and immoral, and thus it was suppressed. The book finally appeared in London in 1914. The Dubliners is considered one of the greatest story collections in the English language – a brutal, brilliant, and often tragic portrait of early twentieth-century Dublin. The book begins with "stories of my childhood" and on to tales of public life. Its larger purpose, Joyce said, was to furnish a moral history of Ireland.