JOYCE, James.

£7,500 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Dubliners. First edition, first issue, of the author's short story debut, his first major work and second book overall. The final story, "The Dead", is roundly considered among the finest ever written. "In its lyrical, melancholy acceptance of all that life and death offer, 'The Dead' is a linchpin in Joyce's work" (Ellmann, p. 252).Joyce spent years battling the publishers to release the book in uncensored form, stating that no artist should dare "to alter in the presentment, still more to deform, what he has seen or heard" (letter of 5 May 1906) and defending the stories as a "first step towards the spiritual liberation of my country" (20 May 1906). The edition comprised 1,250 copies, of which 746 were published in London for first issue, and the remaining 504 shipped to Huebsch in New York, where they were not issued until the end of 1916.

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