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Ulysses $387,000

Book Description: Paris: Shakespeare and Co, 1922, 1922.

Quarto. Original deep blue wrappers, title in white. Some
skilful paper restoration to spine ends and joints, a little
occasional foxing, an excellent copy. First edition, primary
issue, one of 100 copies on Dutch handmade paper; this
copy numbered 44 and signed by Joyce on the limitation
page. The first printing of Ulysses consisted of 1,000
copies, divided into three issues. The first 100 were
designated the primary issue: printed on fine Dutch
handmade paper, numbered 1–100 and signed by Joyce,
these copies bulk thickest of the three issues and were the
most expensive, at 350 francs ($30). Of the remainder, 150
unsigned copies were done on larger but inferior paper,
and the remaining 750 on linen paper, noticeably thinner
and slightly smaller than the Dutch paper issue. Widely
recognized as the key book of 20th-century English
literature, Ulysses is among the major works in the
modernist canon, and its creator one of the great geniuses
of all literature: "Joyce, not to mince words, is Ireland's
Shakespeare, its Goethe, its Racine, its Tolstoy" (John
Sutherland). The book also proved to be a major test case
for laws of freedom of expression. "Forced underground by
censors this was a cryptoclassic already before it was read,
a subversive colossus" (Norman Sherry, James Joyce,
Ulysses, 2nd edition). Or as Joyce's long-suffering wife
Nora put it: "I guess the man's a genius, but what a dirty
mind he has, hasn't he?" Slocum A17; Connolly Modern
Movement, 42. Bookseller Inventory # 47686
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