JOYCE, James (1882-1941). Ulysses. Paris: Shakespeare and Company, 1922.

4to. Original “Greek flag” blue printed wrappers, uncut (rebacked to style, mostly marginal dampstaining or soiling, a few short tears occasionally sympathetically repaired); cloth folding case.

FIRST EDITION, LIMITED ISSUE, ONE OF 750 COPIES ON HANDMADE PAPER of a total edition of 1,000, this copy number 824.

Joyce’s Ulysses was revolutionary in its time, and it stands as the most significant English-language novel of the 20th-century. The mock-heroic epic novel, celebrating the events of a single day, June 16th 1904, employs a complexity of language and structure, and a cohesion of historical sources which have made Ulysses the most diligently studied work of modern literature in English.

Joyce began writing Ulysses in 1914 or 1915, and, thanks to assistance from Ezra Pound, fourteen installments were published in 23 successive issues of Margaret Anderson’s American Journal, The Little Review between 1918 and 1920. Pound was also influential in getting portions of the work published in Harriet Shaw Weaver’s The Egoist in London in 1919. Facing legal issues in America and England, resulting from the novel’s presumed obscene content, The Little Review was reluctant to publish the complete work. After several unsuccessful attempts to find a publisher, Pound introduced Joyce to Sylvia Beach of the Shakespeare and Company bookshop in Paris, who was willing to publish the work under her imprint. The first edition consisted of 1,000 copies: the first 100 copies were printed on handmade paper and signed by Joyce; copies 101-250 were printed on a slightly lesser grade of handmade paper and were not signed; the final 750 copies (as here) were printed on the least expensive stock of handmade paper, also unsigned. Connolly The Modern Movement 42; Slocum & Cahoon A17.

JOYCE, James (1882-1941). Ulysses. Paris: Shakespeare and Company, 1922.