Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress. With Letters of Protest by G. V. L. Slingsby and Vladimir Dixon.

First edition, first issue, a press copy inscribed by Beach on the title page "the publisher, Sylvia Beach" and with "press copy" ink-stamped on the initial blank. The first article, "Dante. Bruno. Vico. Joyce", is Samuel Beckett's first appearance in print, while the wider collection is among the earliest critiques of Finnegans Wake, published ten years before the novel. The French writer Andre Chamson wrote, "Sylvia carried pollen like a bee. She cross-fertilized these writersShe did more to link England, the United States, Ireland, and France than four great ambassadors combined. It was not merely for the pleasure of friendship that Joyce, Hemingway, Bryher, and so many others often took the path to Shakespeare and Company in the heart of Paris." This early critique of Joyce's final work was partially intended to raise funds for the perennially impecunious writer. Other contributors include Marcel Brion, Frank Budgen, Stuart Gilbert, Eugene Jolas, Victor Llona, Robert McAlmon, Thomas McGreevy, Elliot Paul, John Rodker, Robert Sage, and William Carlos Williams. The publishers later sold sheets of this edition to Faber & Faber in London and New Directions in New York, who reissued them with inserted title pages, but this copy is from the original Paris issue. Slocum & Cahoon B10. Octavo. Original white wrappers printed in black. Housed in custom orange cloth slipcase and chemise. Nicking and a couple of spots of faint toning to extremities, short closed tears to spine ends, chipping and toning to otherwise clean contents, many leaves unopened: a very good copy. …