JOYCE, James.

£25,000 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Ulysses. First edition, number 418 of 750 copies on handmade paper numbered 251 to 1,000. This attractive copy is finely bound, retaining the distinctive original blue wrappers at the front and rear. The edition was published on 2 February 1922 in imitation of the traditional three-tiered French format, which was aimed at both connoisseurs and general readers. It consisted of 100 signed copies on Dutch handmade paper, 150 large-paper copies printed on heavier vergé d'Arches, and 750 copies on vergé à barbes, which formed the trade issue.One of the key texts of 20th-century modernist literature, Ulysses also proved a major test case for laws of freedom of expression. "Forced underground by censors,... this was a cryptoclassic already before it was read, a subversive colossus" (Sherry, p. 1). Its creator is considered one of the great geniuses of modern literature: "Joyce, not to mince words, is Ireland's Shakespeare, its Goethe, its Racine, its Tolstoy" (Sutherland).

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