JOYCE, James; Stuart GILBERT (editor). Ulysses. Volume one [–two.]

Joyce's 'Definitive Standard Edition'

JOYCE, James; Stuart GILBERT (editor). Ulysses. Volume one [–two.] [Leipzig: Oscar Brandstetter, Abteilung Jakob Hegner for] Hamburg, Paris, Bologna: The Odyssey Press. 1932.

Two volumes, 8vo. Original beige wrappers, spine and upper wrappers lettered in red; vol. I: pp. 399, [3]; vol. II: [iv], 401–791, [3]; wrappers slightly soiled, corners creased, spines sunned and creased with a few small chips to extremities; first and final few ff. slightly dusty at head with light spotting, but generally clean; overall a very good set; early red ink stamp ‘Dawson 13, Rue Albany, Paris’ to rear inner covers.

First edition, first impression (December 1932) of the ‘definitive standard edition’ of Joyce’s masterpiece; as stated on the imprint page, it was ‘specially revised, at the author’s request, by Stuart Gilbert’.

This edition subsequently served as the basis for later editions of Ulysses, including the 1936 Bodley Head edition, the first to be published on British soil. Gilbert had first been introduced to Joyce’s writing in 1927, after a visit to Shakespeare and Company, Sylvia Beach’s Parisian bookstore, where a page from Joyce in French translation had been affixed to the shop window.

Having noted several mistakes in the passage, Gilbert contacted Joyce and offered to translate his work, leading to a lifelong collaboration and friendship. He was the author of the foundational analytical guide James Joyce’s Ulysses: A Study, written under Joyce’s direct supervision, as well as the translator of works by Sartre, Simenon, and Camus, among others. Despite Gilbert’s revision, this edition contains several typographical errors which were corrected in later impressions.

Slocum & Cahoon A20.

SKU: 2124621