The First Appearance of Beckett in Print
[JOYCE, James.] BECKETT, Samuel, William Carlos WILLIAMS, Robert McALMON, et al. OUR EXAGMINATION ROUND HIS FACTIFICATION FOR INCAMINATION OF “WORK IN PROGRESS” Paris: Shakespeare and Company. 1929.
8vo. Original cream wrappers printed in black; pp. [6], 194, [4]; some toning; wrappers a little rubbed, front wrapper backed, hinge repaired, edges a little worn with a few chips, some small loss to spine, overall good.
First edition of this collection of critical essays on Joyce’s Work in Progress, featuring Samuel Beckett’s first published work.
Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress includes twelve essays, and two letters of protest, discussing James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake (1939), which was then appearing in serialised form as “Work in Progress”. The contributors, all writers who knew Joyce personally and followed the book’s development, include Samuel Beckett (“Dante… Bruno. Vico.. Joyce”), Frank Budgen (“James Joyce’s Work in Progress and Old Norse Poetry”), Robert McAlmon (“Mr. Joyce Directs an Irish Word Ballet”), John Rodker (“Joyce and His Dynamic”), and William Carlos Williams (“A Point for American Criticism”).
Stuart Gilbert and Sylvia Beach speculated that one of the two protest letters was written by Joyce himself. The theory was debunked by an article published in the James Joyce Quarterly in 1979.
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