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Ulysses
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Ulysses Paperback -

by James Joyce

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About this book

Ulysses is a modernist novel by James Joyce. It was first serialized in The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920 and later published by Shakespeare and Company in 1922. Originally, Joyce conceived of Ulysses as a short story to be included in Dubliners, but decided instead to publish it as a long novel, situated as a sort of sequel to A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, picking up Stephen Dedalus’s life over a year later. Ulysses takes place on a single day, June 16, 1904, in Dublin - now celebrated as Bloomsday annually.

Within the massive text of 265,000 words (not so “short” anymore, eh?), divided into 18 episodes, Joyce radically shifts narrative style with each new episode, completely abandoning the previously accepted notions of plot, setting, and characters. The presentation of a fragmented reality through interior perception in Ulysses, often through stream-of-consciousness, is one of many reasons it is considered a paramount in Modernist literature. 

Ulysses presents a series of parallels with Homer’s epic poem Odyssey (Ulysses is the Latinized name of Odysseus.) Not only can correspondences be drawn between the main characters of each text — Stephen Dedalus to Telemachus, Leopold Bloom to Odysseus, and Molly Bloom to Penelope, but each of the 18 episodes of Ulysses reflects an adventure from the Odyssey.

In 1998, the American publishing firm Modern Library ranked Ulysses first on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.

February 2022 will mark the centennial of the publishing of Ulysses, with auctions, sales, and celebrations by Joyce fans scheduled around the globe.

From our Book Collecting Guide: Collecting Ulysses 
https://www.biblio.com/book-collecting/basics/collecting-one-book/collecting-ulysses-by-james-joyce/

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From the publisher

Ulysses is a novel by Irish writer James Joyce. It was first serialized in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, and then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach in February 1922, in Paris. It is considered to be one of the most important works of Modernist literature. Joyce divided Ulysses into 18 chapters or "episodes." At first glance much of the book may appear unstructured and chaotic; Joyce once said that he had "put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant," which would earn the novel "immortality." The two schemata which Stuart Gilbert and Herbert Gorman released after publication to defend Joyce from the obscenity accusations made the links to the Odyssey clear, and also explained the work's internal structure. Every episode of Ulysses has a theme, technique, and correspondence between its characters and those of the Odyssey. The original text did not include these episode titles and the correspondences; instead, they originate from the Linati and Gilbert schema. Joyce referred to the episodes by their Homeric titles in his letters. He took the idiosyncratic rendering of some of the titles--'Nausikaa', the 'Telemachia'--from Victor Berard's two-volume Les Pheniciens et l'Odyssee which he consulted in 1918 in the Zentralbibliothek Zurich.

First edition identification

Unable to find a publisher in the U.S. or U.K., Ulysses was first published in book form by Shakespeare and Company in Paris in 1922. This first edition appeared in blue and white printed wrappers in an edition of only 1,000 copies which are among the most highly sought after modern first editions, commanding prices in the range of $40,000 - $75,000. A signed first edition could easily fetch over $100,000.

Details

  • Title Ulysses
  • Author James Joyce
  • Binding Paperback
  • Pages 576
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
  • Publication date 6/26/201
  • ISBN 9781490530703 / 1490530703
  • Weight 2.91 lbs (1.32 kg)
  • Dimensions 11 x 8.5 x 1.17 in (27.94 x 21.59 x 2.97 cm)
  • Category Literature - Classics / Criticism
  • Dewey Decimal Code FIC

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