Haveth Childers Everywhere. Fragment from Work in Progress

Paris: Henry Babou and Jack Kahane: The Fountain Press. Printed by Ducros et Colas, 1930. Quarto. (11 1/8 x 7 1/2 inches). First edition. 1-72 [2], pp. 72. Title and text printed in black and green. Running heads printed in green. Signed by Joyce in pencil on the limitation leaf. Numbered 70 out of 100 copies. Original glassine and white printed wrappers. Small area of loss at lower spine, minor tear and losses to glassine along spine. Within a modern full green morocco box with gilt decoration and lettering on spine, cloth chemise.

First edition, deluxe issue: number 70 of 100 signed copies of what would ultimately become Joyce's final novel, Finnegans Wake.

In 1930, Joyce sent to Faber and Faber's T. S. Eliot the following "nursery rhyme" to promote Haveth Childers Everywhere: Humptydump Dublin squeaks through his norse, Humptydump Dublin hath a horrible vorse And with all his kinks english Plus his irismanx brogues Humptydump Dublin's grandada of all rogues. Though Faber made little use of it, Joyce's jingle is a key to Haveth Childers Everywhere and Joyce's inherent contradictions: the giant of English literature, who was Irish; the pre-eminent Irish cultural figure, who couldn't speak the language - and wrote in English; the Anglo who had to go to the continent to find an audience; the difficult, cryptic modernist who still has millions of mainstream readers. In 1931, a New York Times reviewer wrote that Haveth Childers Everywhere is "an attempt to enrich and refashion the English language, and as such is highly stimulating and carries the reader through a form of mental gymnastics." Unfortunately, for the same reviewer, it "still remained absolutely incomprehensible." It took Joyce sixteen years to write Finnegans Wake, a book once aptly titled, as here, "Work in Progress." The finished novel was still nine years from publication when this fragment was released. Joyce began writing what would become Finnegans Wake shortly after Ulysses was published in 1922. Fragments of the novel were issued in a variety of formats by different publishers, including Haveth Childers Everywhere, produced in Paris by Obelisk Press founder Jack Kahane and the editor Henry Babou in April of 1930, and distributed in America by The Fountain Press. The publication nearly bankrupted Kahane and Babou. Haveth Childers Everywhere consists of the final part of what is now Chapter 3 of Book III of Finnegans Wake. This copy is one of one hundred numbered copies on "Imperial hand-made iridescent Japan" signed by the author, from a total edition of 685 copies.

Slocum & Cahoon A41.