JOYCE, James. Ulysses. London: Published for The Egoist Press by John Rodker, Paris. 1922.
Small 4to. Original blue wrappers, titles to cover in white; pp. 732, uncut; chipping and splitting to edges, front hinge expertly repaired; a very good copy.
First English edition, limited issue, number 1,125 of 2,000 copies on handmade paper.
Following Sylvia Beach's publication of Ulysses in Paris in February 1992, Harriet Shaw Weaver's Egoist Press, which had supported Joyce in the past, pressed ahead with producing an edition for private circulation in the UK. To circumvent the obscenity laws that meant it was illegal to print the book in Britain, the poet John Rodker, on Weaver's behalf, had it produced in France. "John Rodker hired a room in Paris to act as office. Copies from the printers were delivered to him there and he dispatched by post to all the people who had given us direct orders for the book, including persons in the U.S.A. and elsewhere abroad." (Ellmann, 521).
In this way The Egoist Press edition was instrumental in distributing to British and American readers a work that was immediately acclaimed as a highpoint of modernist literature and continues to act as a benchmark for experimental fiction.
Slocum & Cahoon A18.
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