From the library of Edwin Muir
JOYCE, James. Finnegans Wake. London: Faber and Faber. 1934.
8vo. Red cloth with gilt lettering to spine; pages untrimmed; pp. [6] 628; foxing to front and back endpapers; one line of ink to the last page ot text; very good copy of first edition. Provenance: perforated stamp on the last page of the text reading ‘Complimentary copy - not for sale’, having come originally from the library of Edwin Muir, who wrote one of the early reviews
Review copy of the first edition of Joyce's final masterpiece.
Written over a period of seventeen years, Finnegan's Wake is considered one of the most complex and confounding literary contirbutions. It is composed in a unique and unorthodox vocabulary that melds together standard English with the language of old Irish manerisms, neologisms and puns confirming its status as one of the 20th century's most bold and elusive voices. After the publication of Ulysses, Joyce would not write a single line of prose for a year, after which the earliest reference to the genesis of Finnegan's Wake is recorded.
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