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Ulysses.
by JOYCE, James
- Used
- Hardcover
- first
- Condition
- See description
- Seller
-
London, United Kingdom
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
New York: Random House,, 1934. A superb example of modernist book design First authorized American edition, first printing, trade issue, in the first state dust jacket, with "Reichl" printed on the lower outer corner of the front panel. This edition was conceived by the typographer and graphic designer Ernst Reichl (1900-1980), a "whole book designer" who devised the look of the contents, binding, and dust jacket. The result was "a functional and dramatic design that seemed as modern as the text itself" (Drew & Sternberger, p. 3). Appraising this edition, John Updike wrote that "the title's seven letters, in elongated and squared-off form, take up the entire front surface of the book, echoing the mazelike course the characters pursue through a June day in Dublin" (Updike). Reichl thought that his edition of Ulysses was "the best known design I ever made"; his later book designs include Austin Tappan Wright's Islandia (1942), Bud Schulberg's The Disenchanted (1950), and Marshall McLuhan's The Mechanical Bride (1951). This edition was preceded in the United States by a pirated edition of the Shakespeare and Company Ulysses, published in New York for Samuel Roth in 1929 and sold illegally without Joyce's authorization. Octavo. Original cream cloth over bevelled boards, spine and front cover lettered in black and red, top edge red. With dust jacket, designed by Ernst Reichl. Housed in a red cloth flat-back solander box by the Chelsea Bindery. Cloth foxed, contents clean; jacket lightly toned, short closed tears to spine and extremities, a couple discreetly repaired, price intact: a very good copy in very good jacket. Slocum & Cahoon A21. Ned Drew and Paul Sternberger, By Its Cover: Modern American Book Cover Design, 2005; John Updike, "Deceptively Conceptual", New Yorker, 9 October 2005.
Synopsis
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/
Read More: Identifying first editions of Ulysses.
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Details
- Bookseller
- Peter Harrington
(GB)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 170361
- Title
- Ulysses.
- Author
- JOYCE, James
- Book Condition
- Used
- Binding
- Hardcover
- Place of Publication
- New York: Random House,
- Date Published
- 1934
Terms of Sale
Peter Harrington
All major credit cards are accepted. Both UK pounds and US dollars (exchange rate to be agreed) accepted. Books may be returned within 14 days of receipt for any reason, please notify first of returned goods.
About the Seller
Peter Harrington
Biblio member since 2006
London
About Peter Harrington
Since its establishment, Peter Harrington has specialised in sourcing, selling and buying the finest quality original first editions, signed, rare and antiquarian books, fine bindings and library sets. Peter Harrington first began selling rare books from the Chelsea Antiques Market on London's King's Road. For the past twenty years the business has been run by Pom Harrington, Peter's son.
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Spine
- The outer portion of a book which covers the actual binding. The spine usually faces outward when a book is placed on a shelf....
- Cloth
- "Cloth-bound" generally refers to a hardcover book with cloth covering the outside of the book covers. The cloth is stretched...
- Octavo
- Another of the terms referring to page or book size, octavo refers to a standard printer's sheet folded four times, producing...
- Foxed
- Foxing is the age related browning, or brown-yellowish spots, that can occur to book paper over time. When this aging process...
- First State
- used in book collecting to refer to a book from the earliest run of a first edition, generally distinguished by a change in some...
- Jacket
- Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...
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