Ulysses

Fourth Printing [April 1939] of the Odyssey Press issue, first published in December 1932. 12mo. In 2 vols. Vol.1 pp. 399, [1]; Vol.2 [ii], 401–791, [4]. Stiff grey card covers printed in reddish brown. With the disclaimer "Not to be introduced into the British Empire or the U.S.A." to the rear covers. Printed in Baskerville type by Oscar Brandstetter, Leipzig. A slightly taller, special edition of thirty-five copies, with added leaf before the half title in vol. 1, was printed on hand-made paper and signed by the author.

The definitive standard edition, "as it has been specially revised, at the author's request, by Stuart Gilbert", and still published within Joyce's lifetime. An imprint of Albatross Press, the Odyssey Press was set up in 1932 by John Holroyd-Reece and Max Christian Wenger, with the sole aim of publishing Joyce's Ulysses on the continent, at a time when Anglo-Saxon publishers demurred for fear of prosecution on obscenity grounds.

Former ownership signature to f.f.e.p., light creasing along spines and slight fraying to tail of spine of vol.1, top edges tanned, else Fine.

The pinnacle of the Modernist movement. Originally conceived as an additional short story for Dubliners (1914), the constantly evolving torrent of ideas and allusions Joyce eventually incorporated on a skeleton structure of Homer's Odyssey, with its radical shifts in narrative style, and a legerdemain stream-of-consciousness technique, both subverted mainstream notions of plot, setting, and character portrayal and opened up new avenues for writers to explore. The storyline picks up Stephen Dedalus's life subsequent to events depicted in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), with the character's peregrinations around the city of Dublin on a single day, June 16, 1904, serving as the plot.

The novel's long gestation period (1914 – 1921) meant that successive chapters were first serialized in The Little Review (March 1918 – December 1920), before eventual publication by Shakespeare and Company in 1922. In 1998, Modern Library ranked Ulysses top of its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.

"[A] book to which we are all indebted, and from which none of us can escape". –T.S. Eliot, "'Ulysses,' Order, and Myth", The Dial (Nov 1923)

[Slocum & Cahoon A20]