Première Edition de Ulysse de James Joyce de 1922 Dédicacée Pour la Soeur de Sylvia Beach

La première édition d'Ulysse de James Joyce, dédicacée à Cyprian Beach, la soeur de Sylvia Beach est en vente chez Bauman au prix modique de $ 175000.


AN EXTRAORDINARY RARITY OF MODERN LITERATURE:THE SHAKESPEARE AND COMPANY 1922 FIRST EDITION OF ULYSSES,THIS COPY INSCRIBED BY JOYCE TO SYLVIA BEACH’S SISTER,A TYPIST OF THE MANUSCRIPT—ONE OF THE FEW KNOWN COPIES INSCRIBED BY JOYCE IN THE YEAR OF PUBLICATION

JOYCE, James. Ulysses. Paris: Shakespeare and Company, 1922. Quarto, later three-quarter dark blue morocco, raised bands, marbled endpapers, top edge gilt, fore-edge and bottom edge uncut; with original blue paper front and back wrappers bound in. Custom cloth slipcase.    $175,000.

First edition, one of 750 copies printed on handmade paper (of only 1000 copies printed). This copy specially inscribed by Joyce on the preliminary blank to Sylvia Beach’s sister, who helped type the Circe episode from Joyce’s manuscript for the printer: “To Cyprian Beach / James Joyce / Paris 10 April 1922.” With the leather bookplate of Efrem Zimbalist, noted violinist and father of the actor, on the verso of the original front wrapper.

Of the 1000 copies that comprise the first edition, only 100 copies (numbered 1 to 100) were issued signed by Joyce and printed on Dutch handmade paper; 150 unsigned copies (numbered 101 to 250) were printed on verge d'Arches paper; and 750 unsigned copies (numbered 251 to 1000) were printed on handmade paper. This copy (number 329), one of the 750 unsigned copies printed on handmade paper, was specially inscribed by Joyce to Cyprian Beach. It is known that Sylvia Beach insisted that Joyce not sign any copies other than the 100 printed on Dutch paper to encourage the sale of that more expensive issue. As a result, this is one of the few known copies that Joyce ever specially signed and is an extraordinary rarity, as well as an exceptional association.

After working seven years on Ulysses, Joyce was desperate to find a publisher (he once commented that "publishers and printers alike seemed to agree among themselves, no matter how divergent their point of view in other matters, not to publish anything of mine as I wrote it"). He finally turned to Sylvia Beach of Shakespeare and Company in Paris. She accepted the assignment and, in her book Shakespeare and Company, recounts Cyprian's role in the publication drama: "[At one point the printer,] M. Darantiere informed me that the printing had caught up with the supply of text. It was the Circe episode that was holding us back; Circe was balking. Joyce had been trying in vain for some time to get this episode typed. Nine typists had failed in the attempt. The eighth, Joyce told me, threatened in her despair to throw herself out of the window. As for the ninth, she rang the bell at his door and, when it was opened, threw the pages she had done on the floor, then rushed away down the street and disappeared forever… After that, he had given up trying to get the Circe typed… I told him not to worry, I would look for volunteers to go on with it. The first to volunteer her services in the cause of Circe was my sister Cyprian. She had to be at the film studio all day, but she always woke up at four o'clock in the morning, and she offered to put in some early hours on Circe. Cyprian was an admirer of Ulysses, and an expert reader of undecipherable handwriting, because her own was that kind. Deciphering the Joycean signs, word by word, she was slowly progressing with the work when her film took her off to other scenes, and I had to find another volunteer" (Beach, Shakespeare and Company, 63-4).

"Within a month of the publication, the first printing of Ulysses was practically 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. Probably no significant novelist, poet, or dramatist from that time on has been untouched by Joyce's Ulysses" (de Grazia, 27). "The novel is universally hailed as the most influential work of modern times" (Grolier Joyce 69). This copy is bound without a title page, quite possibly a trial copy or a copy held back from sale and thus given by Joyce to Cyprian Beach. Slocum and Cahoon A17. Very small bookplate inscribed “To Kenneth Kendall 1961 from Roy B. Jones” on front free endpaper.

Front joint expertly repaired, light rubbing to extremities of attractive morocco binding. A unique and exceptionally rare and desirable copy of one of the landmark books of the 20th century

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