ULYSSES by Joyce James - 1926

Paris: Shakespeare and Company, 1926. The first printing of Ulysses to have the type entirely reset, work accomplished with Joyce’s participation, the 8th printing overall and one of the key Shakespeare and Company printings, very early and desirable. Small 4to, in a handsome contemporary binding of three-quarter green morocco over marbled paper-covered boards, the spine evenly toned to a pleasant honey color and with simple raised bands ruled in blind, red morocco label lettered and framed in gilt, t.e.g. (6), 735 pp. A very desirable copy in contemporary binding, the paper still quite fresh for this title and all very sturdy and sound. With a bit of quite pleasant and expected mellowing by time. ONE OF THE KEY PRINTINGS BY SYLVIA BEACH’S SHAKESPEARE AND COMPANY OF THIS LANDMARK OF 20th CENTURY LITERATURE. It is the first reprinting of the work to use entirely reset type. The work was accomplished with Joyce’s participation. The copy is bound as is often found on printings of the period in a simple style designed to draw little attention to itself due the controversy of the text within. In all a highly collectable copy.
ULYSSES can be viewed as the pinnacle of the Modernist movement, and its impact on all subsequent western literature is unmistakable. Such writers as Virginia Woolf, John Dos Passos, William Faulkner, Samuel Beckett, Malcolm Lowry, and Anthony Burgess have all paid tribute, consciously or unconsciously, to Joyce's influence. Burgess as well pronounced it the greatest single work in the English literature of the century, and he was not alone in that opinion. At the beginning of the present century the Modern Library placed ULYSSES in the number one spot on their 100 best books of the 20th century list.