“THE FIRST PUBLISHED CRITICAL WORK ON FINNEGANS WAKE”

(JOYCE, James, BECKETT, Samuel). Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress. By Samuel Beckett, Marcel Brion, Frank Budgen, Stuart Gilbert, Eugene Jolas, Victor Llona, Robert McAlmon, Thomas McGreevy, Elliot Paul, John Rodker, Robert Sage, William Carlos Williams. With Letters of Protest by G.V.L. Slingsby and Vladimir Dixon. Paris: Sylvia Beach, Shakespeare and Company, 1929. Octavo, original printed cream paper wrappers, uncut. Housed in a custom clamshell box. $1750.

First trade edition of Sylvia Beach’s third and last Joyce publication, a collection of essays on his yet-unpublished Finnegan’s Wake, with Samuel Beckett’s “Dante.. Bruno. Vico.. Joyce,” his first publication in book form. A scarce copy of a notoriously fragile work.

This scarce collection of essays on Finnegans Wake (1939)—Joyce's last novel—was issued by Sylvia Beach's Shakespeare and Company in May 1929. As "the first published critical work on Finnegans Wake … Our Exagmination provided an immediate answer to friends and critics who believed that Joyce was wasting his time and talent in writing Finnegans Wake" (Fargnoli & Gillespie, 74, 168). As Beach recalled in her memoirs, "The title, of course, was Joyce's; perhaps, too, the 'Litter'at the end. The book was composed of 12 studies of Joyce's new Work in Progress by 12 writers… who had been watching Work in Progress from the beginning, each seeing it from his own angle, but interested in Joyce's experiment." In addition to this volume's "hostile and humorously illiterate" Letters of Protest are "quotations from Work in Progress as it had been appearing in transition… [and] a passage concerning Swift and blindness (109), which was not later incorporated in Finnegans Wake" (Slocum and Cahoon). Of these major essays by writers such as Stuart Gilbert and William Carlos Williams—"the best was by Samuel Beckett" (Ellman, 613). "Dante… Bruno. Vico.. Joyce" is the first appearance of Beckett's work in book form. "Several of the 12 essays in the collection had been previously published in transition" (Fargnoli & Gillespie, 86). Also issued in an edition of 96 numbered copies printed on vergé d'Arches paper. Slocum & Cahoon B10. Federman & Fletcher 1. Gift inscription in blue ink on front free endpaper.

Slightest edge-wear to front wrapper, faint marginal stain to rear wrapper. A near-fine copy.