COLLECTED POEMS OF JAMES JOYCE by Joyce, James - 1936

New York: The Black Sun Press, 1936. First Edition. A typically exquisite production by The Black Sun Press, printing Joyce's Chamber Music, Pomes Penyeach, and Ecce Puer - the latter never before included in any edition. Slocum & Cahoon A44; Minkoff A-45. Trade Issue, one of 750 numbered copies, this being copy no.626. Octavo (17cm); cream paper-covered boards, with titling and decorative elements stamped in navy blue on spine and front cover; publisher's original glassine overlay; [ii],65,[1]pp, with frontispiece portrait of the author by Augustus John. Hint of sunning to crown, else a fresh, Fine copy. Glassine shows light wear to extremities, shallow losses to spine ends and lower corners, and a small triangular chip to lower rear panel; Very Good+.

The Black Sun Press. Limited to 750 numbered copies of which this is a REVIEW copy. Fine in creme-colored patterned boards, In the original glassine wrapper chips and small tears. In archival cover. . Fine. Hardcover. 1st Edition. 1st Printing. 1936.

N.Y.: Black Sun Press, 1936. First edition, deluxe issue, one of 50 copies printed on Japan vellum and signed by Joyce. Slocum & Cahoon A44. Collected Poems includes poems previously published in Chamber Music and Pomes Penyeach, but its primary distinction is in being the first appearance of Joyce's finest and most moving poem, "Ecce Puer", which Joyce wrote on February 15, 1932, the day his grandson, Stephen James Joyce, was born. In "Ecce Puer", however, Joyce's joy at his grandson's birth is subdued by grief over the recent death of his father, John Joyce, who had died on December 29, 1931, and the poem ends: "A child is sleeping; / An old man gone. / O, father forsaken, / Forgive your son!" As Joyce wrote to T. S. Eliot, "He had an intense love for me and it adds anew to my grief and remorse that I did not go to Dublin to see him for so many years." Joyce had not seen his father in eleven years, and confided to Harriet Weaver that "It is not his death that crushed me so much as self-accusation."… Read More