EXCEPTIONALLY RARE SIGNED LIMITED FIRST ENGLISH EDITION OF JOYCE’S ULYSSES, ONE OF ONLY 100 DELUXE COPIES SPECIALLY BOUND IN FULL VELLUM-GILT AND SIGNED BY JOYCE

JOYCE, James. Ulysses. London: John Lane, (1936). Quarto, original full cream vellum, gilt-stamped Homeric bow on each cover, top edge gilt, uncut and unopened, original numbered slipcase. $42,000.

Signed limited first English edition, number 85 of only 100 deluxe copies (out of a total edition of 1000 copies) signed by James Joyce, printed on mould-made paper, and beautifully bound in full cream calf vellum featuring gilt-stamped Homeric bows on both covers designed by Eric Gill, uncut and entirely unopened in the scarce original slipcase. A fine copy, exceptionally rare and desirable.

"Universally hailed as the most influential work of modern times" (Grolier Joyce 69), the fight for a British printed and published edition of Joyce's masterpiece had seemed interminable. Even after the Shakespeare and Company 1922 first edition, the Egoist Press 1922 "English" edition printed in Paris, the corrected 1932 Paris/Hamburg/Bologna Odyssey Press edition and the January 1934 first American edition following Judge Woolsey's 1933 lifting of the U.S. ban, Joyce still had great difficulty finding an English publisher willing to risk prosecution and bring out an unexpurgated edition. In 1934, John Lane finally agreed to take it on, but the printers protested against certain passages and publication was delayed another two years. Joyce, in Copenhagen when the October 3, 1936 publication date was announced, remarked to the Danish writer Tom Kristensen, "Now the war between England and me is over, and I am the conqueror" (Ellman, 693). Of the 1000 limited copies, a mere 100 were printed on mould-made paper, bound in vellum, and signed by Joyce, as here; the remaining 900 copies were printed on japon vellum paper and left unsigned. The 100 signed copies of this edition join the 100 signed copies of the 1922 first edition, the 25 signed copies of the 1932 Odyssey Press edition and the 250 Limited Editions Club copies signed by Joyce in 1935 for a total of only 475 signed copies of Ulysses in all the limited editions together. Slocum A23. With the publisher's original announcement of publication laid in.

Only minor wear to slipcase, book exceptionally fine and beautiful. A stunning copy.