Ulysses by James Joyce, First Edition, Signed, shakespeare (4 results)

Fourth printing of Joyce's masterpiece, signed by him. Quarto, original wrappers. Signed by the author in the month of publication on the front free endpaper, "JamesÂJoyce Paris 7 January 1924." In very good condition, the joints lightly repaired. Housed in a custom clamshell box. Uncommon signed. Ulysses was published in Paris by Shakespeare & Company, 1922. It was a struggle for the author to find a publisher, a comic irony considering that Ulysses is "[u]niversally hailed as the most influential work of modern times" (Grolier Joyce 69). Ulysses was an immediate success. The first printing sold out, and "within a year Joyce had become a well-known literary figure. Ulysses was explosive in its impact on the literary world of 1922" (de Grazia, 27). Even so, the book faced difficulties in global reception. It was banned in the U.K. and was prosecuted for the obscenity in the Nausicaa episode (Ellmann, 1982). Joyce's inspiration for the novel began as a young boy reading Charles Lamb's Adventures of Ulysses and writing an essay entitled "My Favorite Hero" after being impressed by the wholeness of the character (Goreman, 1939). The idea for the novel grew from a story in Dubliners in 1906, which Joyce expanded into a short book in 1907, before reconceptualizing it as the heady novel in 1914 (Ellmann, 1982). The book can initially seem unstructured and chaotic, and Joyce admitted that he "put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant" (The Observer, 2000). The French translator Stuart Gilbert published a defense of Ulysses shortly after its publication in which he supported the novel's use of obscenity and explained its internal structure and links to the Odyssey against accusations of ambiguity. Every episode, Gilbert explained, is connected to the Odyssey by theme, technique, and correspondence between characters. Another instance of Ulysses' literary contribution is his use of stream-of-consciousness, a technique employing carefully structured prose, both humorous and charactering, and involving puns and parodies. Joyce was a precursor to the use of stream of consciousness in the later decades. Similar narrative techniques were used by his contemporaries Virginia Wolfe, William Faulkner, and Italo Svevo. Their style can be better characterized as an "interior monologue, rather than stream of consciousness, is the appropriate term for the style in which [subjective experience] is recorded, both in The Waves and in Woolf's writing generally" (Stevenson, 1992).

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. No Jacket. 1st Edition. Specially bound in full leather in 2 volumes. This is number 389 of a the special 750 copies printed on handmade, laid paper. Signed and dated in ink by James Joyce: "James Joyce, Paris, 9. ix. 1924" on the front endpaper following the front blue wrapper. Joyce's Signature has been authenticated by Glenn Horowitz of NYC. Volume I contains 370 pages. Volume II begins on page 371 and and ends on p. 732 with the "Trieste-Zurich-Paris, 1914-1921" dateline. The next page is printed in capital letters: "Printed for Sylvia Beach by Maurice Darantiere at Dijon, France." The rear wrapper is not present at the end of volume two. Both volumes have been specially bound in full leather with 4 gilt rectangular rules and a delicate inner rectangle of hand-tooled chain patterns culminating in larger floral designs at the inside corners of the front and rear boards. Both front boards bear the name of "JOAN" in vertical gilt capital letters. The spine of volume I is missing 6" of the 9.5" of the spine length, but the top portion with "I" is present. The front blue wrapper printed in White with "Ulysses" by James Joyce is clean and crisp, as is the text throughout volumes one and two. The top edges are gilded. And there are predominantly orange and grey marbled endpapers. There is hand-tooled dentelle gilding along the front and rear inside edges of the boards as well. Both volumes have some pencil scrawlings on the front endpapers, but nothing affecting the text. Despite the unusual two-volume format and the missing rear wrapper, modern first edition authority Allen Ahearn opined that this signed and dated copy in Joyce's hand of one of the 750 specially printed first editions is perhaps as scarce as one of the 100 signed copies, given that none of the 750 copies was issued with Joyce's signature. This copy was signed and dated two years after publication in 1924. This edition is limited to 1000 copies: 100 copies (signed) on Dutch handmade paper numbered from 1 to 100; 150 copies on vergé d'Arches numbered from 101 to 250; 750 copies on handmade paper numbered from 251 to 1000. This is copy No. 389. "The publisher asks the reader s indulgence for typographical errors unavoidable in the exceptional circumstances. S.B." In a review in The Dial, T.S. Eliot said of Ulysses: "I hold this book to be the most important expression which the present age has found; it is a book to which we are all indebted, and from which none of us can escape." He went on to claim that Joyce was not at fault if people after him did not understand it: "The next generation is responsible for its own soul; a man of genius is responsible to his peers, not to a studio full of uneducated and undisciplined coxcombs." The book has its critics; Virginia Woolf stated that "Ulysses was a memorable catastrophe immense in daring, terrific in disaster." Ulysses has been called "the most prominent landmark in modernist literature", a work where life's complexities are depicted with "unprecedented, and unequalled, linguistic and stylistic virtuosity." That style has been stated to be the finest example of the use of stream-of-consciousness in modern fiction, with the author going deeper and farther than any other novelist in handling interior monologue. This technique has been praised for its faithful representation of the flow of thought, feeling, mental reflection, and shifts of mood. (Wikipedia) First Edition, One of 750 numbered copies. Signed by Author(s).

Ninth Printing of the First Edition. 205 x 160 mm. (8 1/8 x 6 1/4"). 4 p.l. (first blank), 735 pp. DRAMATIC DARK BLUE-GRAY CRUSHED MOROCCO, BLIND-TOOLED AND INLAID TO AN ABSTRACT DESIGN, BY SALLY LOU SMITH (stamp-signed with her initials in gilt on rear doublure), with overall wraparound design of inlaid elongated, irregular-shaped pieces of black, gray, blue, tan, and yellow morocco with blind-tooled lines extending from these shapes, MATCHING MOROCCO DOUBLURES tooled in gilt with branch-like lines, yellow handmade free endpapers, gray flyleaves, all edges gilt. In the matching morocco-backed clamshell box. Front flyleaf INSCRIBED BY JOYCE TO H. G. WELLS: "To / H. G. Wells / Respectfully / James Joyce / 5 November 1928 / Paris." Slocum and Cahoon 17. â Isolated faint foxing or marginal spots, but a clean, fresh copy with few signs of use, in a new binding. This later printing of what is generally recognized to be the most important 20th century novel in English is inscribed by the author to one of his earliest and most important supporters, and is offered in a binding by an influential Designer Bookbinder. First issued in 1922, "Ulysses" rocked the literary world. J. B. Priestley, writing in the "Clarion" in 1934, said what most scholars and critics acknowledge--that "as a literary feat, an example of virtuosity in narration and language, it is an astounding creation. Nobody who knows anything about writing can read the book and deny its author, not merely talent, but sheer genius." Our copy was presented by Joyce to H. G. Wells (1866-1946), whose support of "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" was instrumental in establishing Joyce's literary reputation. Reviewing that book in 1916, Wells praised "its quintessential and unfailing reality. One believes in Stephen Dedalus as one believes in few characters in fiction." He considered "Portrait" to be "by far the most living and convincing picture that exists of an Irish Catholic upbringing," and noted how sharply it contrasted the Irish and the English: "No single book has ever shown how different they are, as completely as this most memorable novel." The two men did not meet until 12 years later, in Paris, at which time Joyce inscribed the present copy of his masterwork to Wells. At the same time, Joyce presented Wells with some excerpts of what would become "Finnegan's Wake." On 23 November 1928, Wells wrote to Joyce from his winter home in the south of France, expressing his regret that he could not promote these latest works with the same enthusiasm: "I have enormous respect for your genius dating from your earliest books and I feel now a great personal liking for you but you and I are set upon absolutely different courses. . . . I want a language and statement as simple and clear as possible. . . . Who the hell is this Joyce who demands so many waking hours of the few thousand I have still to live for a proper appreciation of his quirks and fancies and flashes of rendering?" Still, Wells acknowledged, "Your work is an extraordinary experiment and I would go out of my way to save it from destructive or restrictive interruption." The abstract binding by distinguished modern artisan Sally Lou Smith evokes a journey: as the multicolored inlays march from the rear edge around the spine and across the front against a grim, gray ground, Bloom's peregrinations through Dublin and the characters he encounters seem to be brought to mind. Born in the United States, Smith (1925-2007) spent several years in France, then settled in 1958 in London. There, she spent four and a half years learning bookbinding under John Corderoy at Camberwell School of Arts & Crafts before beginning to work out of her own bindery in 1963. Her work has been widely honored both in her early days (she won the bookbinding award given by Major J. R. Abbey in 1965) and for many years since (among others, she won three Thomas Harrison Competition prizes). In the catalogue for the "Modern British Bookbinding" exhibit held in Brussels and The Hague in 1985, five of the 50 bindings pictured were executed by Smith, who is listed in the catalogue as one of the 20 Fellows of Designer Bookbinders, the principal bookbinding society in Great Britain. She served as president of that society and was a greatly respected teacher of bookbinding. A comprehensive survey of her work appeared in "The New Bookbinder" no. 21 (2001).

Signed limited first edition of Joyce's masterpiece, one of 100 numbered copies printed on handmade paper from a total edition of 1000 copies, this is number 51. Thick quarto, original blue and white wrappers. Laid in are the following pamphlets: Extracts from Press Notices of UlyssesÂby JamesÂJoyce" and the Shakespeare and Company prospectus for Ulysses, with woodcut vignette of Shakespeare, photographic portrait of Joyce tipped in. In near fine condition, rebacked. Housed in a custom full morocco clamshell box. An exceptional example. Ulysses was published in Paris by Shakespeare & Company, 1922. It was a struggle for the author to find a publisher, a comic irony considering that Ulysses is "[u]niversally hailed as the most influential work of modern times" (Grolier Joyce 69). Ulysses was an immediate success. The first printing sold out, and "within a year Joyce had become a well-known literary figure. Ulysses was explosive in its impact on the literary world of 1922" (de Grazia, 27). Even so, the book faced difficulties in global reception. It was banned in the U.K. and was prosecuted for the obscenity in the Nausicaa episode (Ellmann, 1982). Joyce's inspiration for the novel began as a young boy reading Charles Lamb's Adventures of Ulysses and writing an essay entitled "My Favorite Hero" after being impressed by the wholeness of the character (Goreman, 1939). The idea for the novel grew from a story in Dubliners in 1906, which Joyce expanded into a short book in 1907, before reconceptualizing it as the heady novel in 1914 (Ellmann, 1982). The book can initially seem unstructured and chaotic, and Joyce admitted that he "put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant" (The Observer, 2000). The French translator Stuart Gilbert published a defense of Ulysses shortly after its publication in which he supported the novel's use of obscenity and explained its internal structure and links to the Odyssey against accusations of ambiguity. Every episode, Gilbert explained, is connected to the Odyssey by theme, technique, and correspondence between characters. Another instance of Ulysses' literary contribution is his use of stream-of-consciousness, a technique employing carefully structured prose, both humorous and charactering, and involving puns and parodies. Joyce was a precursor to the use of stream of consciousness in the later decades. Similar narrative techniques were used by his contemporaries Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, and Italo Svevo. Their style can be better characterized as an "interior monologue, rather than stream of consciousness, is the appropriate term for the style in which [subjective experience] is recorded, both in The Waves and in Woolf's writing generally" (Stevenson, 1992).