OUR EXAMINATION ROUND HIS FACTIFICATION FOR INCAMINATION OF WORK IN PROGRESS. With letters of protest by G. V. L. Slingsby and Vladimir Dixon

Sylvia Beach. Shakespeare and Company. Paris. 1929. FIRST TRADE EDITION. 8vo. (7 x 5.6 inches).


Page edges tanned, as usual, a small stain to the fore edge of the first handful of pages and a few minor chips to the edges of a few leaves, otherwise a very good example in the original cream coloured paper wraps, printed in black to spine and both covers. Some loss to the top of the spine, but not affecting the lettering, and a small closed tear and some minor chipping to the extremities. Paper a bit toned and rubbed but overall a presentable copy.

There was also a limited edition of 96 numbered copies on thicker verge d'Arches paper issued simultaneously with this issue.

This early critique of Joyce's final work was published some 10 years prior to the publication of the finished novel. Part of the incentive to publish was apparently to raise funds for the perennially impecunious Joyce. A myth surrounding this work is that one or both of the two letters of protest were written by Joyce himself. However both authors existed, indeed Beach herself commissioned Slingsby. Dixon's effort, which is marvellous, was an unsolicited one by a Russian émigré who was to die in Paris in 1929, just as the book was published. -- Slocum and Cahoon. B.10.