Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress.

First limited British edition of this collection of critical essays and two letters on James Joyce's book Finnegans Wake. Small octavo, original publisher's cloth. Boldly signed by Samuel Beckett and Marcel Brion on the half-title page, and additionally signed by Beckett above the title of his essay. Samuel Beckett and Marcel Brion both personally knew James Joyce and were early defenders of his experimental work 'Finnegans Wake.' Beckett, a close associate of Joyce in Paris, assisted him with research and contributed an essay to 'Our Exagmination.' Marcel Brion, though more distant, also knew Joyce and played a key role in promoting Finnegans Wake to a French audience, offering interpretive insights that helped frame its reception within European modernism. He also contributed an essay to 'Our Exagmination.' One of 96 numbered copies, this example is unnumbered. Near fine in a near fine dust jacket. Letters of Protest by G.V.L. Slingsby and Vladimir Dixon. From the collection of Robert Duncan. Rare. Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress (1929) is a landmark critical volume that offers some of the earliest responses to James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, then still unpublished and known only as Work in Progress. Comprising essays by a range of writers—including Samuel Beckett, William Carlos Williams, and Stuart Gilbert—the collection attempts to grapple with the experimental form, linguistic density, and philosophical ambition of Joyce’s evolving text. While some essays offer praise and others express bafflement, the volume as a whole reflects the modernist fascination with Joyce’s radical departure from conventional narrative.…