2. Two Essays, 1901.

TWO ESSAYS. | “A Forgotten Aspect of | the University Question” | BY | F. J. C. SKEFFINGTON | AND | “The Day of the Rabblement” | BY | JAMES A. JOYCE. | PRICE TWOPENCE. | Printed by | GERRARD BROS., | 37 STEPHEN’S GREEN, | DUBLIN.

The long and arduous experience of finally seeing Ulysses into print was hardly the first time Joyce had encountered difficulties in getting his work published. Indeed, his essay “The Day of the Rabblement,” one of his earliest published pieces, was rejected by St Stephen’s magazine, an undergraduate journal at University College, Dublin, which Joyce attended. Joyce’s essay was refused because in it he mentioned Gabriele D’Annunzio’s novel Il Fuoco (1900), which was listed on the Vatican Index of Prohibited Books. Joyce teamed up with his friend Francis Skeffington, whose essay “A Forgotten Aspect of the University Question,” which dealt with women’s rights, was also rejected by St Stephen’s. They privately published their two essays together in October 1901. They paid the Dublin printing firm Gerrard Brothers £2 5s. to produce about 85 copies. Since they charged 2d. a copy, they published their essays at a loss.

Joyce’s essay pronounces his disdain for the Irish Literary Theatre for falling under the sway of Irish nationalism and provincialism. He begins his essay with a blunt assertion about the role of the artist, one which will resonate for the rest of his career as a writer: “No man, said the Nolan, can be a lover of the true or the good unless he abhors the multitude; and the artist, though he may employ the crowd, is very careful to isolate himself.” Joyce’s brother Stanislaus recalls that Joyce wrote this essay “rapidly in one morning.” Stanislaus also writes that the essay “got more publicity than if it had not been censored.” [2]

3. Holograph draft of “A Portrait of the Artist” essay, 1904 (Buffalo II.A).

Joyce wrote this brief, quasi-autobiographical sketch for the magazine Dana, although the editors declined to publish it. One editor, John Eglinton, explained “I can’t print what I can’t understand.” [3] In this piece, Joyce combines a fictionalized autobiographical narrative with philosophical exposition in order to describe the evolution of artistic sensibilities in an unnamed young man. Joyce subsequently expanded upon the ideas expressed in this piece in his aborted novel Stephen Hero and, ultimately, in the second version of that novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which ironically reprises and rephrases the title of this essay. Many of the incidents found in that novel can be traced back to this earlier essay.

This draft is written in an exercise book that belonged to Joyce’s sister Mabel (1893-1911). Joyce dated it January 7, 1904. Joyce subsequently used this exercise book to write notes for Stephen Hero, which occupy the later pages. In 1928 he gave this document to Sylvia Beach.

5. Holograph draft of Epiphany 21, 1903 (Buffalo I.A.14).

The epiphany was the central concept of Joyce’s early aesthetic theory and practice. The epiphany is explicitly defined only in Stephen Hero. “By an epiphany he meant a sudden spiritual manifestation, whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or in a memorable phase of the mind itself. He believed that it was for the man of letters to record these epiphanies with extreme care, seeing that they themselves are the most delicate and evanescent of moments.” [4] In an epiphany the “soul” or “whatness” of an object “leaps to us from the vestment of its appearance.” [5] The epiphany has a two-fold aspect: on the one hand it is an experience of a “sudden spiritual manifestation” out of a relatively quotidian or mundane event, and on the other hand it is the artistic reproduction of that experience. The epiphany is thus not just the experience but the written account of that experience. The epiphany is thus what defines the artist: the artist is the person who is able to record these spiritual manifestations with appropriate sensitivity.

When Joyce reworked Stephen Hero into A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, he omitted specific mention of the epiphanies. In Stephen Hero Stephen says that he is going to collect “many such moments together in a book of epiphanies.” [6] This was a practice that Joyce shared and from 1901 to 1904 he wrote as many as seventy-one epiphanies, of which only forty survive today. Twenty-two, in Joyce’s hand, are at Buffalo and an additional eighteen are at Cornell. With one exception, all the Cornell epiphanies are in Stanislaus Joyce’s hand (some of them duplicate ones at Buffalo).

In Ulysses, Stephen, in a bemused tone of self-criticism, recalls his practice of recording epiphanies: “Remember your epiphanies written on green oval leaves, deeply deep, copies to be sent if you died to all the great libraries of the world, including Alexandria?” [7] Several of the epiphanies Joyce wrote in his youth are worked into Stephen Hero, A Portrait, and Ulysses.

Stanislaus Joyce writes that this epiphany was a description of their mother’s funeral on August 13, 1903 and was written about two or three months afterwards. [8] Joyce reworked it into Bloom’s interior monologue at Paddy Dignam’s funeral in the “Hades” episode of Ulysses (item 25, case III).

6. Holograph draft of Epiphany 1, ?1901 (Buffalo I.A.6).

This epiphany recalls an incident of Joyce’s childhood, possibly from 1891, and appears at the end of the first section of the first chapter of A Portrait (item 7). Within the context of the epiphanies, this one has a self-reflexive quality in that it depicts a young boy reacting to the threats of adult authority figures by reciting a small poem; in other words it shows in miniature an artist withdrawing from power and creating art.

7. James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, 1916 (first American edition).

A Portrait of the Artist | as a Young Man | BY | JAMES JOYCE | [publisher’s device] | NEW YORK | B. W. HUEBSCH | MCMXVI

The copy on display is opened to the end of the first section of the first chapter, where we can see a slightly modified version of epiphany 1 (item 6). Joyce shortened the scene and transposed Mr Vance’s threats to Stephen’s aunt, Dante (a modified form of “auntie”).

8. James Joyce, Chamber Music, 1907 (first edition).

1907 | Chamber | Music | BY | JAMES JOYCE | ELKIN MATHEWS | Vigo Street, London

Joyce composed these thirty-six lyrical poems between 1901 and 1904. These were published by the London firm of Elkin Mathews at Arthur Symons’ recommendation (Yeats had introduced Joyce to Symons, a literary journalist, in London in 1902). By the time this collection of poems was published, Joyce had become dissatisfied with its immaturity, although certain themes found in Joyce’s later works are already present here. Shortly after Chamber Music was published, the composer G. Molyneux Palmer set the poems to music with Joyce’s permission.

These are two copies of the first edition, one closed and one opened to show the title-page. There are three variant bindings in the first edition; both copies on display are the second variant, with thick wove end-papers and the poems in signature C poorly centered on the page. Joyce inscribed the copy that is closed “To | Sylvia Beach | James Joyce | Paris | 11 april 1922.”

9. James Joyce, Dubliners, 1914 (first edition).

DUBLINERS | BY | JAMES JOYCE | [publisher’s device] | LONDON | GRANT RICHARDS LTD. | PUBLISHERS

Joyce wrote the fifteen short stories in Dubliners between 1904 and 1907. Some of the earlier stories were published in various Dublin journals and one of them, “The Sisters,” was signed “Stephen Daedalus” when it appeared in The Irish Homestead in 1904. The seven-year delay between the completion of the stories and its first publication was the result of Joyce’s struggles with various publishers. In late 1905 Joyce, having written ten short stories, submitted them to the London publishing firm of Grant Richards, who had rejected Chamber Music (item 8) the year before. During the initial negotiations with Richards, Joyce added four more stories to the collection and revised “The Sisters.” In April 1906, Richards informed Joyce that some of the stories would have to be altered since the printer objected to certain features in three of the stories, such as the use of the word “bloody” in “Grace.” Under British law, the printer as well as the publisher could be held liable for any obscenity; in practice this meant that many British printers were reluctant to undertake any potentially controversial project. Joyce would run into this law again with A Portrait and Ulysses. Joyce adamantly refused to make any editorially-imposed revisions claiming that these would weaken his artistic goals of representing Dublin and its inhabitants to the world. Richards cancelled Joyce’s contract in late 1906. The following year, Joyce added one more story, “The Dead,” and also submitted the collection to Elkin Mathews, who were publishing Chamber Music (item 8), but they rejected it. He then submitted it to the Dublin firm Maunsel and Co. who expressed interest and signed a contract in 1909. In 1910, George Roberts, one of the founders of Maunsel, urged Joyce to make some revisions for fear that some stories might cause offense in Dublin. Joyce was more accommodating to Roberts than he was to Richards and agreed to make some of his suggested changes. Negotiations over these changes dragged on for two more years until finally Roberts suggested that he give Joyce the printed sheets so he could publish the collection himself. However, Roberts’ printer, John Falconer, destroyed the printed sheets in order to prevent any possible publication. Joyce was understandably distraught at this and he vented his spleen against Roberts and Falconer in his satirical broadside “Gas from a Burner” (1912). Joyce somehow managed to obtain a duplicate set of printed sheets before leaving Dublin in 1912. In November 1913, Richards unexpectedly offered to publish Dubliners without any of the changes he had required five years earlier and so Dubliners finally appeared in 1914.

16. Ulysses notebook, 1918 (Buffalo VIII.A.5).

In 1906, while living in Rome, Joyce briefly considered, then abandoned, writing a short story entitled “Ulysses” for Dubliners. By the time he was finishing Exiles this idea was reawakened, but now Ulysses would be a full novel. On June 16, 1915, Joyce wrote to Stanislaus that he had completed the first episode of this new novel, although he did not mention anything about the significance of the date. Shortly after this, because of the war Joyce left Trieste for Zürich, where he finished Exiles and continued the early work on Ulysses. Very little material from the early stages of Ulysses’ composition remains.

Frank Budgen describes Joyce’s habit of note-taking:

He was always looking and listening for the necessary fact or word; and he was a great believer in his luck. What he needed would come to him. That which he collected would prove useful in its time and place. ... I have seen him collect in the space of a few hours the oddest assortment of material: a parody on the House that Jack Built, the name and action of a poison, the method of caning boys on training ships, the wobbly cessation of a tired unfinished sentence, the nervous tick of a convive turning his glass in inward-turning circles, a Swiss music-hall joke turning on a pun in Swiss dialect, a description of the Fitzsimmons shift. ... At intervals, alone or in conversation, seated or walking, one of these tablets was produced, and a word or two scribbled on it at lightening speed as ear or memory served his turn. No one knew how all this material was given place in the completed pattern of his work.... The method of making a multitude of criss-cross notes in pencil was a strange one for a man whose sight was never good.

Besides using his notebooks to record snippets of quotidian life as Budgen recounts here (perhaps this is an extension of the concept of the epiphany from a decade earlier), Joyce undertook meticulous research for Ulysses. Each episode in the novel was planned to have a series of correspondences to Homer’s Odyssey as well as other associations (item 22). Once Joyce had decided upon an episode’s features, he would take notes on these subjects that he would use for his writing and revising. If an element from a notebook was transferred to a draft, he would cross it out in a colored pencil to preclude it from being inserted again. Elements taken from the notebooks at a single time would be crossed out in the same color; beyond that there is no apparent logic to the colors Joyce used to cross out material. (James Joyce and the Making of Ulysses, OUP 1989, pp.175-77.

This particular notebook contains notes on Homer and Greek mythology that Joyce presumably took while studying reference works at the Zentralbibliothek in Zürich. The notes on the two pages on display come from Victor Bérard’s Les Phéniciens et “l’Odyssée” (Paris: 1902) and W.H. Roscher’s Ausführliches Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie (Leipzig: 1884-1937). (See Phillip F. Herring, Joyce’s Notes and Early Drafts of Ulysses: Selections from the Buffalo collection, Virginia UP 1977, pp.3-10.)

This notebook is later than VIII.A.5 (item 16) and the vast majority of notes here were used on the extensive revisions Joyce made on late typescripts and proofs as he was preparing Ulysses for publication, although a small number of notes appear to have been used earlier. Mostly, the notes are organized by episode, with most of the notes taken for the last seven episodes, although there are also notes for the late revision of six earlier episodes. This notebook is an adjunct to the notesheets Joyce used, which are now at the British Library (the National Library of Ireland holds two notebooks contemporaneous with V.A.2). Most of the notes here are for “Ithaca” and “Penelope,” the final two episodes. In the “Penelope” notes, Joyce gathers details about Gibraltar to enhance his description of Molly’s childhood. (See Robert Martin Adams, Surface and Symbol, NY: OUP 1967, pp.231-33.

This workbook contains the earliest extant draft of the “Cyclops” episode and here the episode is divided into eight discrete scenes, each of which Joyce numbered in blue pencil (the National Library of Ireland holds a workbook that is the continuation of this draft). Because it is such an early draft, its appearance is even more chaotic than what is found on most other extant working drafts. The verso of the front cover (also on display) contains a brief chronology of significant events in Bloom’s life prior to 1904. [15] Since this chronology was written in pencil on a colored cover page, it is somewhat difficult to read and so a computer scan, enhanced for legibility, is also on display.

While the fair-copy manuscripts for Ulysses are clearer and more legible than the working drafts that preceded them, they are still working drafts themselves as they contain numerous revisions and additions. Joyce’s fundamental process of writing was accretion and he seemed constitutionally incapable of leaving a document unsullied by further modifications and additions. In June 1919, John Quinn, an Irish-American lawyer in New York and a patron of Pound and Eliot, offered to buy the manuscript of Ulysses. Initially Joyce was reluctant, but eventually he agreed to sell Quinn the fair-copy manuscript in installments as it was being written. (Myron Schwartzmann, “Quinnigan’s Wake”: John Quinn’s Letters to James Joyce, 1916-1920’, in Bulletin of Research in the Humanities, 81. 2, Summer 1978, pp.236-41.) In 1923 Quinn sold his manuscript at auction to Dr A.S.W. Rosenbach, a prominent Philadelphia manuscript and book dealer; it now resides at the Rosenbach Museum and Library and is thus known as the Rosenbach Manuscript.

Joyce did not send Quinn two pieces of the fair-copy: the Messianic scene in “Circe,” because that was a late addition, and the final sentence in “Penelope.” Both of these are now at Buffalo. While he was preparing his manuscript for auction, Quinn noticed that his draft of “Penelope” was incomplete. He repeatedly asked Joyce if he still had this fragment but Joyce claimed that it had been written only on the proof pages. On display is the last page with Molly’s famous final “Yes” and Joyce’s epigram “Trieste-Zurich-Paris | 1914-1921.”

Joyce devised Ulysses in such a way that each episode would have its own set of correspondences to Homer, its own symbols, its own style, and other parallels. In September 1920, he contacted his friend Carlo Linati, who had translated Exiles into Italian, about the possibility of writing a review of Ulysses. To help Linati better understand Ulysses, Joyce sent him a table, or schema, of the correspondences in each episode. This was written out in Italian on two large sheets of graphing paper. Joyce divided each episode into the following categories: time; color; persons; technic; science, art; sense (meaning); organ; and symbol. The final three episodes are given much less detail than the others because they were still in a very primitive stage of composition in 1920. [17] Therefore, this manuscript documents a turning point in Joyce’s conceptualization of Ulysses.

Ultimately, Linati never wrote the article Joyce requested and returned this document to Joyce, who in turn gave it to Sylvia Beach. Later, Joyce prepared a different schema (item 43, case V), which is, obviously, more comprehensive for the final three episodes. Joyce never intended either schema to be published or disseminated in any form as these were prepared only for his closest friends and associates.

23. The Little Review (March 1918; April 1919; August 1919; July-August 1920; September-December 1920).

In August 1915, Ezra Pound arranged to have episodes of Ulysses serialized in two magazines for which he served as an editor, The Egoist in England and The Little Review in the United States. Ultimately, The Egoist only published four episodes of Ulysses (”Nestor”, “Proteus”, “Hades”, and “Wandering Rocks”) because Harriet Weaver could not find a printer who would accept Joyce’s novel. The Little Review was founded in 1914 by Margaret Anderson; its subtitle was “A Magazine of the Arts, Making no Compromise with the Public Taste.” When Anderson first read “Proteus,” she exclaimed “This is the most beautiful thing we’ll ever have. We’ll print it if it’s the last effort of our lives.” (Margaret Anderson, My Thirty Years War, NY: Covici, Frirede, 1930, pp.174-75.) In the Autumn of 1917, Joyce began submitting typescripts for publication in The Little Review and the first episode, “Telemachus,” appeared in the March 1918 issue (on display).

Pound was acutely aware that Joyce’s writing would invite the opprobrium of the authorities and censorship, or worse, was a very real possibility. The Little Review had already suffered problems: the November 1917 issue had been suppressed because of the alleged indecency of Wyndham Lewis’ story “Cantleman’s Spring Mate.” Pound therefore decided that some compromises would have to be made in order to publish “Calypso.” He wrote Joyce: “I think certain things simply bad writing, in this section. ... The contrast between Blooms [ sic ] interior poetry and his outward surroundings is excellent, but it will come up without such detailed treatment of his dropping feces. ... Perhaps an unexpurgated text of you can be printed in a greek or bulgarian translation later”. (Pound/Joyce, ed. Forrest Read, New Directions 1967, p.131.) Pound deleted about twenty lines from “Calypso” for publication in The Little Review, all from the account of Bloom’s visit to the outhouse. While Pound disagreed with Joyce’s artistic choices, he was primarily acting in the best interests of the publishers of The Little Review. Uncompromising to the last, Joyce refused to tolerate any repeat of Pound’s excisions and he insisted that Ulysses only be published in the form he wrote it.

The January 1919 issue, which contained the first half “Lestrygonians,” was confiscated by the American Postal Authorities. This was followed by seizures of the May issue, which had the second half of “Scylla and Charybdis,” and then the January 1920 issue, the third part of “Cyclops.” In September 1920, matters took a turn for the worse when John S. Sumner, the secretary for the New York Society for the Prevention of Vice, filed an official complaint against The Little Review on the basis of the July-August 1920 issue (on display), which contained the third part of the “Nausicaa” episode. Legal action was taken against The Little Review and its editors, Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap; the trial was held in February 1921. Acting as their lawyer, Quinn was able to spare Anderson and Heap a jail sentence but they were each fined $50. Although the magazine itself survived the trial, it emerged much-weakened and finally ceased publication in 1929. The trial scared off potential commercial publishers, such as B.W. Huebsch, from issuing an unexpurgated Ulysses.

Publication of Ulysses in The Little Review ceased with the first portion of “Oxen of the Sun” in the September-December 1920 issue (on display). This meant that Joyce was no longer writing on deadline and so from “Oxen of the Sun” onwards, the episodes became longer and stranger. Had publication in The Little Review continued, most likely Ulysses would have wound up being a very different and quite possibly far less revolutionary book. [20]

24. Sylvia Beach, c. 1920 [photo].

Sylvia Beach (1887-1962) was the daughter of a Presbyterian minister in Princeton. In 1916 she moved to Paris and in 1919 she opened a bookshop, Shakespeare and Company, on 8, rue Dupuytren, which served as a meeting place for English and American expatriates. The story of how she took over the publication of Ulysses once it seemed that no one else would has become legendary. In her memoirs she writes that upon hearing of Joyce’s exasperation in learning that Ulysses might never be published, she was inspired to suggest that she and her bookstore “have the honor of bringing out your Ulysses. He accepted my offer immediately and joyfully. I thought it rash of him to entrust his great Ulysses to such a funny little publisher. But he seemed delighted, and so was I. We parted, both of us, I think, very much moved.” (Beach, Shakespeare & Co., NY: Harcourt & Brace 1957, p.47.) This account is most likely exaggerated. Earlier drafts of the memoirs have Joyce himself suggesting that she publish Ulysses : “Joyce said to me: ’ I’m afraid you’ll have to do it, Miss Beach.’ I was quite willing to accept the honor, though I felt it was going to be rather a huge venture.” [22] In fact, in order to circumvent prosecution, John Rodker, an English poet, had earlier offered to Weaver that he would publish a subscription-based edition of Ulysses using a French printer. [23] In effect, Joyce had Beach follow a plan that had already been devised for publishing Ulysses. It is a testament to her courage and dedication that she was able to do what no one else could.

25. Typescript for the “Hades” episode, 1918-1921 (V.B.4: 5).

For the episodes of Ulysses that appeared in The Little Review, Joyce had three copies of the typescript prepared: one for The Egoist, one for The Little Review, and one for himself. He would make corrections and revisions on all three typescripts before sending them out. Because of the complexity of some of the fair-copy drafts, the typists made frequent mistakes, only some of which Joyce was able to correct. Of course, he also added some new material at this stage. After Beach had agreed to publish Ulysses, Joyce took one of the typescript copies and revised each episode further before sending it to Darantiere, the printer in Dijon (item 30, case IV). The episodes that received the most revisions at this stage were “Lotus Eaters,” “Lestrygonians,” “Cyclops,” and “Nausicaa.” For the episodes written after the trial of The Little Review (“Circe”-”Penelope”), new typescripts were prepared, although this sometimes proved to be a cumbersome process (item 28).

This particular page on display, page 5 of Buffalo V.B.4, contains the reworked version of epiphany 21 (item 5, case I).

This typescript page shows Joyce’s revisions and also the printer’s signature in the top left margin of the page.

27. Page Proofs for the “Circe” episode, December 1921 (V.C.I-30b).

Normally, a writer stops work on a book once it has been submitted to the printer, their only remaining task being correcting any mistakes the printer might make. However, Joyce took a very different approach and with Ulysses (and later with Finnegans Wake) he saw the proof stage as an integral facet of the book’s composition. Indeed, as much as one third of Ulysses was written on the proof pages. This meant that Darantiere, the printer (item 30, case IV), would have to produce multiple versions of each proof in order to accommodate the ever-expanding text. Joyce’s habit of imposing substantial additions as the book was being printed was actually relatively common practice in 19th-Century France. [24] The proofs were pulled in two stages: galleys (referred to by their French name placards), which typically consist of eight unnumbered pages on one side of a large sheet, and page proofs, which are printed on both sides of the sheet and are folded to form a gathering of sixteen pages. Since Joyce was working on many different sections of Ulysses at the same time as he was preparing the proofs, many of the late additions deal with introducing patterns of cross-referencing and symbolic correspondences throughout the novel. [25] Certain episodes changed dramatically during the proof stages. For example, “Aeolus” was recast: on the first set of placards Joyce added in a series of headings to punctuate the text. This distinctive feature had been absent in previous versions, most obviously to readers of The Little Review’s serialization of this episode. [26] This particular page proof on display shows an interesting situation in the development of Ulysses, atypical in itself but representative of the kinds of problems Darantiere faced in general. After making a few revisions, Joyce signed one copy of this page proof with the coveted stamp of approval “Bon à tirer” (”Ready to print”). However, a few days later Joyce took up a duplicate of this page proof and introduced substantial new passages. He marked this page “Corrections supplémentaires si encore possible” (”Supplementary corrections if still possible”). Apparently, by the time Darantiere received this copy of the proofs it was no longer possible to incorporate the new revisions. Therefore, Joyce instead added these passages to a later section of “Circe” that was in an earlier stage of the proof process. He modified them to fit in the new context but they are clearly recognizable. [27]

In order to account for the often very complex process of composition for each episode in Ulysses, we at Buffalo have prepared a flowchart or stemma for each episode that represents the inter-relationship between the various draft levels. This stemma illustrates the evolution of the “Circe” episode. The earliest extant draft is at Buffalo (V.A.19), although there were an indeterminate number of earlier drafts that have not survived. The two successive drafts are now at the National Library of Ireland. Before the fair-copy was made, there had to have been an intermediate, now-missing, draft. From the fair-copy, a typescript was prepared but this proved to be especially cumbersome. Initially, the typing went smoothly, but after the typist had completed forty-five pages, her father suffered a heart attack. Joyce then decided to have the remaining half of the episode copied out by an amanuenses under Beach’s supervision. From these amanuensis copies, a second typescript was prepared that followed from where the first one left off. A further complication was that the husband of one of Joyce’s typists was so offended by the material his wife was typing, he threw a portion of the manuscript into the fire. Since Joyce had by that time already sent the fair-copy to Quinn, he was left without any documentation for a few pages of “Circe.” Joyce wrote Quinn to send back the missing pages. Instead, Quinn sent Joyce photostatic reproductions which were then copied by an amanuensis, then typed, and then copied again by the amanuensis who did the second half of the episode, and then, finally, typed for the master typescript (which was duplicated). Darantiere started pulling proofs sequentially once he received the typescript and pulled further proofs as he received the inevitable series of revisions from Joyce. Independent of this chain of composition, Joyce drafted a lengthy insertion, the Messianic sequence. The fair-copy of this sequence (Buffalo V.A.20) appears to be the first draft. From this fair-copy a typescript was made and then a series of proofs, pulled at first independently from the rest of the episode and only incorporated into it some two months later, in December 1921. The sequence described above (item 27) is also illustrated here: the aborted revisions made on the duplicate proof 30ii (Buffalo V.C.1-30b) wind up on proof 35i and proof 35ii.

This stemma was prepared by Sam Slote and Luca Crispi.

30. Letter from Maurice Darantiere to Sylvia Beach, April 8, 1921.

Adrienne Monnier, Beach’s companion, recommended that she hire Maurice Darantiere, an established printer in Dijon, to produce Ulysses. Darantiere made books for tony French publishers and bibliophiles but also worked with contemporary French writers and so was used to dealing with experimental works of fiction. He was very accommodating to Beach and her unusual circumstances. Joyce had the highest respect for him. Darantiere had many obstacles to contend with beyond Joyce’s unclear typescript and penchant for substantial revision. Only one of his typesetters, Maurice Hirchwald, actually knew English but somewhat unfortunately he decided to proofread Ulysses and thereby introduced further distortions into the text. Joyce was able to correct many of these errors perpetrated by Darantiere and his team; however, some did creep into the first edition. While the edition Darantiere ultimately produced has flaws and mistakes, it is a testament to his scrupulous skill and understanding that Ulysses was able to come out at all.

In this letter, Darantiere estimates the cost of producing Ulysses to be a total of 27,875.96 Fr. Darantiere also warns that he will levy an additional charge of 4.75Fr./hour for accommodating the author’s corrections. Ultimately, Darantiere charged an additional 3,852 Fr. for all the changes he had to implement [See letters from Darantiere to Beach, at Buffalo.]

This is a typescript of the second version of the schema for Ulysses Joyce prepared (see item 22). To accommodate the length of this plan, Joyce had four sheets pasted together. This copy was tipped in to the copy Joyce gave Beach (item 42) and is inscribed “Given to Sylvia Beach | 2 February 1922 | Paris | James Joyce.” This version of the schema lacks the category “sense” from the first one but adds another, “scene.” Buffalo has three copies of this schema and a further four are known to exist (all are typed). The schema Joyce later gave to Stuart Gilbert for his book on Ulysses (items 67 and 68, case VIII) follows from this one in form and content.

In November 1921, while Joyce was still completing Ulysses, he was also correcting the inevitable mistakes that Darantiere and his crew were making. He groused to Weaver: “I am extremely irritated by all those printer’s errors. ... Are these to be perpetuated in future editions? I hope not.” When it came time for the Egoist Press edition in October, Joyce, Weaver, and Rodker began compiling a list of errata. Joyce compiled a list through “Cyclops” (item 102, case XIII). He also vetoed many of Rodker’s suggested corrections since, as he explained to Weaver, “These are not misprints but beauties of my style hitherto undreamt of.” Apparently, Joyce had become more sanguine about the errors in his text. Eventually, an eight-page listing of corrections was made that was tipped in to the second printing. For the third printing, Darantiere implemented most of these corrections into the text. However, he was unable to catch all the mistakes — and besides new ones had been made in the second and third printings — therefore a second, shorter errata list, of four pages, was prepared for the fourth printing (item 62, case VII). This document, a spare copy of the first errata list, shows Joyce indicating which corrections were not made for the third printing so that they could be listed in the second errata list.

Synopsis of printings

1st Printing (Shakespeare & Company, Paris) - February 1922 (1000 numbered copies). 2nd Printing (Egoist Press, London) - October 1922 (2000 numbered copies of which 500 copies burned by New York Post Office Authorities).   3rd Printing (Egoist Press, London) - January 1923 (500 numbered copies of which 499 seized by Customs Authorities, Folkestone). 4th Printing (Shakespeare and Company, Paris) - January 1924. [4th-7th printings in 1,000 copies] 8th printing, or 2nd edn.; entirely reset; May 1926 11th printing [28th thousand] 1930.

[Compiled from this catalogue by BS.]

[double title-page, verso:] U [recto:] JAMES | JOYCE | LYSSES [Note: The U on verso extends the height and width of the type page]

In early 1932, Bennett Cerf of Random House secured the American rights to Ulysses from Beach and, sensing that the moral landscape of the United States had changed, began planning how he could publish it. The following Autumn, Ulysses was again put on trial but this time the results were favorable (item 72). Cerf boasted that he had printers working on setting Ulysses within ten minutes of hearing the verdict. Because of the unusual circumstances of its publication, Ulysses never legally acquired copyright protection in America and as it had already been published in 1922 in Paris, Cerf would be unable to obtain a new copyright. Cerf was thus concerned that another publisher might take advantage of the lifting of the ban and publish Ulysses first. In order to preclude potential competitors, Cerf asked Joyce to provide him with additional material he could put into his edition. This would serve two purposes: the new material could be copyrighted in 1934 and it would distinguish the Random House Ulysses from any rival. Ideally Cerf would have liked to put in either a copy of the schema (item 43, case V) or an essay of some kind but Joyce adamantly refused to include any kind of explanatory materials in an edition of Ulysses. Cerf thus had to settle for a letter from Joyce in which he explained the curious history of his novel’s publication and his authorization for Cerf and the Random House edition of Ulysses. On the copyright page of the edition, the 1934 copyright applies only to Joyce’s letter. (See Robert Spoo, ’Copyright and the Ends of Ownership: The Case of the Public Domain Ulysses in America’, in Joyce Studies Annual, 10, 1999, pp.29-31.)

In preparing their edition, Cerf and his typesetters assumed they were working from a copy of the 1927 Shakespeare and Company printing when instead they had a piratical edition that had been “published” in New York in 1929 by an enterprising publisher named Samuel Roth. This piratical edition was a forgery of the legitimate 1927 printing. Even today, some book dealers confuse Roth’s edition with the Shakespeare 1927 printing, although there are a few subtle physical differences between the two. More importantly, the text is highly corrupt and contains numerous errors, some of which are quite serious. The Random House edition thus repeats these mistakes. Once it became apparent that he had based his edition on a faulty text, Cerf decided to set matters straight. For the 1940 Modern Library imprint, he had the 1934 edition rigorously proof-checked against one of the Odyssey Press printings in order to remove the most egregious errors. This new edition was still far from perfect as some mistakes from Roth’s edition remained. Complicating matters further, the 1949 Random House reprint reverted back to the uncorrected 1934 text and so for many years American trade editions of Ulysses remained unreliable.

This copy is inscribed by Joyce to his son and daughter-in-law: “To | Giorgio and Helen | with thanks for | their help | Babbo | Paris | 20.i.’934.”

ULYSSES | James Joyce | JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD | BURY STREET WC1 | LONDON

In October 1931, Joyce wrote Weaver that it seemed like the ban on Ulysses in the U.S. would not last much longer, “I suppose England will follow suit as usual a few years later. And Ireland 1000 years hence.” (Letters, III, p.223.) Joyce was at least correct in terms of England. Although Woolsey’s decision only had legal effect in the U.S., it made the threat of prosecution for an English edition of Ulysses somewhat less likely. After negotiating with various publishers, Joyce finally settled with The Bodley Head. In 1934 English printers were still too fearful of prosecution and so the Bodley Head edition did not appear until 1936. Bodley Head initially published a hefty deluxe edition, limited to 1,000 copies, 100 signed and bound in vellum and 900 bound in linen buckram (the buckram copy on display is one of an undetermined number of out-of-series presentation copies). This volume also included Woolsey’s decision and other documents relating to the American trial as a pre-emptive defense against any possible charges. The Homeric bow on the cover was designed by Eric Gill.

Ulysses [in script] | by James Joyce | [ornament] | WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY STUART GILBERT AND ILLUSTRATIONS BY | Henri Matisse | The Limited Editions Club | New York, 1935

Sensing that there might be a compelling need in American homes for a deluxe edition of Ulysses, George Macy (as in the New York department store Macy’s) acquired the rights to publish a limited edition of Ulysses with illustrations by Henri Matisse for the Limited Editions Club. Random House agreed to this since a large, deluxe volume would not be a direct competitor to their trade edition. Matisse confessed that he never read Joyce’s work and his illustrations are strictly Homeric, as can be seen by his illustration for the “Cyclops” episode on display here. Reproductions of Matisse’s preparatory sketches are also included within the edition. A portfolio of Matisse’s etchings was sold separately. The edition is essentially a coffee-table book for collectors. The text is set in two columns. Notably, the headings in “Aeolus” are each set in different fonts in an attempt to mimic newspaper headlines in a manner that Joyce never conceived of (different fonts are used elsewhere as well). These choices have aroused the opprobrium of various graphic artists, such as John Ryder — a book designer for The Bodley Head from 1957-1986 — who called this edition “a typographic travesty.” [56] This edition also features an eleven-page introduction by Stuart Gilbert. The text is clearly based on the first Odyssey Press printing but contains additional revisions supplied by Gilbert (some of which are incorrect).

The copy on display is the one Joyce gave to his son and daughter-in-law and is inscribed: “To | Georgio and Helen | Xmas 1935: Paris | Babbo.”

On November 3, 1922, while he was staying in Nice, Joyce sent Weaver a list of corrections for Ulysses up to page 258, although he claimed that the list extended to page 290 (LI: 192). The remaining corrections can be found in a small stenographer’s notebook. The first extant page of this notebook lists six corrections for the “Cyclops” episode. With the seventh entry, Joyce abruptly changes track and writes the curious line “Polyphemous is Ul[ysses]’s shadow.” Obviously this line was prompted by the episode of Ulysses he was correcting, but it is hardly an emendation. It is as if he is taking a step back to think about an aspect of the text he had just written and its relationship with its Homeric background. The remainder of the notes on this page are of a qualitatively different nature. They are taken from the October 20, 1922 edition of the Irish Times and combine words from various sections of that paper. Vincent Deane, “Greek Gifts: Ulysses into Fox in VI.B.10, in Joyce Studies Annual, 5(1994), pp.163-75.” Instead of continuing his list of corrections for Ulysses, Joyce has begun to record words that strike his fancy, for whatever reason, for some later, as yet undetermined, use. Three of the notes are crossed out in blue since Joyce incorporated them into early Wake drafts the following year. Most of the remaining pages in this notebook are filled with similar notes derived mostly from journals. Joyce is thus reprising the note-taking technique he had employed with Ulysses (items 16 and 17, case II). There are several additional reference to Ulysses later in this notebook, but none of these are corrections. This may be an overstatement but it seems that on this one page, Joyce is stopping work on Ulysses and starting work on what will become Finnegans Wake. Indeed, in response to a series of questions from Vanity Fair in 1929, Joyce replied “7 years. Since October 1922. Begun at Nice.” [[Letters, Vol. III, p.193, n.3.]

A great deal of the Wake ’s verbiage derives from notes taken from a variety of sources (newspapers, books, overheard conversation, etc.). In some cases, especially with the later Wake notebooks, Joyce took the notes for specific purposes (item 105) and in others he merely jotted down random words which were then subsequently used because they struck his fancy a second time, when he was going over his notebooks and preparing drafts. It appears that Joyce was amassing a heterogeneous stockpile of phrases in order to litter his work with all sorts of echoes of the world around him (of course, these echoes are almost impossible to identify without recourse to the notebooks). In this regard, Joyce really was “a scissors and paste man” as he admitted in 1931 to George Antheil. (Letters, Vol. 1, p.297.)

The first series of notes on this page from VI.B.10 derives from a two-part article on modern versions of the Tristan and Isolde legend by Thomas Sturge Moore that was published in The Criterion — the first part of which appeared in the same issue as the English translation of Larbaud’s essay on Joyce and Ulysses (item 39, case IV).

On the top of page 155 is an early draft of the first hundred-letter thunder-word that appears on the first page of Finnegans Wake. This one word collects together words that all mean “thunder” from a wide variety of languages, such as French, Greek, Irish Gaelic, Hindustani, Italian, Swedish, Portuguese, Old Rumanian, and so on. Joyce used this notebook extensively in writing the first chapter of the Wake, and it also features an early draft of the hundred-letter word from the “Prankquean” episode. On the top of page 154 is one of the many Americanisms Joyce collected in his notebooks: “turkey & fixins.”

This late notebook is atypical in that Joyce categorized various note-clusters into indices. Most of these involve lists of words from various languages, such as Romansch, Basque, Burmese, Provençal, Hebrew, Russian, Chinese, Spanish, Polish, and Kissuaheli, among others. The notebook is opened onto a page of Armenian words. There are also notes on various books and a wide variety of other materials. At this late stage in the composition of the Wake, Joyce was looking for very specific things to add to his text and this notebook served as an organizational repository for such items. (Atypically, the notes in this notebook were taken in pen rather than in pencil.)

Joyce’s “Work in Progress” began appearing in the journal transition in 1927 (item 108). The eleventh issue published an excerpt Joyce subsequently entitled “The Muddest Thick That Was Ever Head Dump,” which was later incorporated into chapter II.2. This page is a galley-proof of four pages for transition 11 with extensive corrections by Joyce. Eugene Jolas, one of the editors of transition, remarked that because of his constant additions and revisions to his text, the word “Joyce” had become a “verb of objurgation” amongst the transition typesetters. At the top left of this galley, there is an early (but not the first) version of the diagram that appears on page 293 of the Wake.

Joyce had been publishing excerpts from his new “Work in Progress” (later titled Finnegans Wake ) in a variety of literary journals since 1924. However, he still ran into problems. In 1925, the English review The Calendar of Modern Letters refused to publish the Anna Livia Plurabelle chapter (item 106) on the grounds that it might be too prurient and so Monnier stepped in and published it in the review she edited, the Navire d’argent. The following year, The Dial rejected a series of chapters he submitted. Joyce lamented to Weaver: “I am sorry the Dial has rejected the pieces as I wanted them to appear slowly and regularly in a prominent place.” [66] On December 12, through Sylvia Beach, Joyce got his wish when he met Eugene Jolas. Along with his colleague Elliot Paul, Jolas was planning to start a new journal, to be called transition, and he was eager to have Joyce as a contributor. As the first chapter was virtually ready when Joyce met Jolas and Paul, that piece was promised for the first issue of transition. For most of 1927 Joyce worked to revise the other chapters in book I for publication there. The publication schedule of transition more-or-less revolved around the availability of Joyce’s chapters. The early issues appeared very regularly, almost monthly, since the chapters for book I had already been drafted. Once the cache of available chapters had been exhausted, subsequent issues of transition appeared more infrequently. Certain issues also included essays explicating Joyce’s “Work in Progress,” some of which were collected in a volume published by Beach (item 84, case XI).

The idea for transition was that it should serve as a transatlantic link for the avant-garde. In 1949, Jolas coined the woolly term “pan-romanticism” to name the variety of writings published by transition. “ Transition contained elements of gothic, romantic, baroque, mystic, expressionist, Dada, surrealist, and, finally, verticalist modes of thinking. In the last phase, it tried to blend these traditions into a cosmic, four-dimensional consciousness.” (Jolas, ’Pan-romanticism in the Atomic Age’, Transition Workshop, ed. Jolas, NY: Vanguard Press 1949, p.393.) Transition was not so much a journal of the avant-garde, but rather a document of the various avant-garde s that were circulating and mingling (and not without friction) in Paris in the 1920s and 30s. While transition has often been mistaken for a journal solely dedicated to Joyce, there are some key differences. Jolas sought to harness the literary experimentations in transition into a full-fledged revolution, something he formalized into a manifesto, “The Revolution of the Word,” in 1929.

The issue on display is one of the few that do not contain an installment of Joyce’s “Work in Progress.” By the early 1930s Joyce’s output had slowed considerably, only to pick up again in 1935. Instead, this issue contains an homage to James Joyce, in honor of his fiftieth birthday, with articles by Jolas, Stuart Gilbert, Padraic Colum, and Philippe Soupault, among others.

On the bottom of page 37 is the entry: “to day 16 of June 1924 | twenty years after. | Will anybody remember | this date.” This note is in Nora Joyce’s hand.

James Joyce [in red] | THE MIME OF MICK | NICK AND THE | MAGGIES | A FRAGMENT FROM [in red] | WORK IN PROGRESS [in red] | [publishers’ device] | MXMXXXIV | THE SERVIRE PRESS [dot] THE HAGUE [in red]

Another fragment for “Work in Progress,” this one appears as chapter II.1 in Finnegans Wake. The cover, initial letter, and tailpiece were designed by Joyce’s daughter Lucia. The copy on display is #23 of twenty-nine parchment-bound copies on Simili Japon of Van Gelder Zonen and is signed by both Joyce and Lucia. (In the Wake, the number of the Maggies is twenty-nine, hence the number of the special limitation.)

JAMES JOYCE’S | SCRIBBLEDEHOBBLE | THE UR-WORKBOOK FOR FINNEGANS WAKE | EDITED, WITH NOTES AND AN INTRODUCTION, BY | Thomas E. CONNOLLY | NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY PRESS

Finnegans Wake notebook VI.A is unusual in several respects: it is much larger than all the other notebooks and Joyce divided it into forty-seven sections, each having a title drawn from his previous literary works and with a section for each episode in Ulysses. There are four additional sections at the end: “Personal,” “Words,” “Names,” and “Books.” For a long time, because of its distinctive format, it was assumed that this notebook was the first Wake notebook. It is commonly called “Scribbledehobble” after the first word in the notebook (this appears in the Wake at 275.22). Contemporary scholarship has challenged the primacy of VI.A and it is now certain that at least three notebooks preceded this one (items 102 and 103, case XIII). It appears that some time in 1923 Joyce used this notebook to organize and consolidate notes from other notebooks; however, he did not continue this process for long. In 1926, he used this notebook again to consolidate some notes and there are additional Wake- related notes in other hands. Connolly’s transcription, while flawed in places, is pioneering in that this was the first attempt to transcribe a Wake notebook. Although some of his presuppositions are now known to be incorrect, the scholarship that led to recent discoveries would not have been possible without Connolly’s work and this book.

JAMES JOYCE’S | MANUSCRIPTS & LETTERS at | the UNIVERSITY of BUFFALO | A CATALOGUE | Compiled and with an Introduction by | PETER SPIELBERG | Published by the University of Buffalo [dot] 1962

The thankless task of going through the thousands and thousands of pages that constitute Buffalo’s Joyce holdings went to Peter Spielberg, one of Connolly’s students. Spielberg begins his catalogue by saying: “To praise the scope of the collection of James Joyce manuscripts now part of the Lockwood Memorial Library of the University of Buffalo would certainly be redundant, since the reader need only turn to the catalogue that follows to be immediately convinced of the immeasurable importance of the collection.” With great ability, Spielberg categorized the collection in a cogent manner. The catalog numbers used throughout this catalog all derive from Spielberg. He attempted a preliminary dating of all the Finnegans Wake notebooks; his dating has been revised and updated several times since by other scholars (items 121 and 125), but Spielberg’s work was truly groundbreaking for its time. The materials that arrived in the second Beach consignment arrived after Spielberg completed his catalog and are thus not included.

Danis Rose | The Textual Diaries | of James Joyce | The Lilliput Press [dot] Dublin

In this pioneering and controversial study, Danis Rose describes the evolution of Finnegans Wake in terms of the Buffalo notebooks. Among other things, he offers a very precise chronology of the notebooks, updating the work done by Spielberg (item 120) and others before him.

Edited by Philip F. Herring | Joyce’s Notes and | Early Drafts for Ulysses | Selections from | the Buffalo Collection | Published for the Bibliographical Society of | the University of Virginia | By the University Press of Virginia | Charlottesville

In this book, Philip Herring provides transcriptions and commentaries for a selection of the Ulysses notebooks and holograph drafts at Buffalo.

JAMES JOYCE | FINNEGANS WAKE | A Facsimile of Buffalo Notebooks VI.B.5-VI.B.8 | Prefaced & Arranged by | DAVID HAYMAN | [publisher’s device] Garland Publishing, Inc. | New York & London [dot] 1978

In the 1970s, Buffalo was a key participant in The James Joyce Archive. Published in 63 volumes between 1977 and 1980, under the general editorship of Michael Groden, the Archive provided reproductions of all the then-known extant Joyce manuscripts. Obviously, Buffalo’s extensive collection was fundamental to this project: the Finnegans Wake notebooks alone take up 16 of the Archive ’s 63 volumes. The Wake volumes were edited by David Hayman and Danis Rose. Perhaps overstating the case, in his review of the Archive for the James Joyce Quarterly, Phillip Herring called its publication “an event of galactic importance.” [70]

On display is one of the Wake notebook volumes, which contains images of four notebooks. The photograph of Joyce opposite the title page was taken by Joseph Breitenbach.

JAMES JOYCE | THE FINNEGANS WAKE NOTEBOOKS AT BUFFALO | Notebook VI.B.10 | Editors: Vincent Deane, | Daniel Ferrer, Geert Lernout | Introduction : Vincent Deane | Bibliographic description: Luca Crispi | [image of the cover of notebook VI.B.10] | Editorial Committee at Buffalo: | Robert J. Bertholf, Luca Crispi, Sam Slote | Editorial Board: Jacques Aubert, Michael Groden, Clive Hart, David Hayman, | Thomas Headrick, Claude Jacquet, Roland McHugh, Seán Sweeney | BREPOLS PUBLISHERS

The Wake notebook volumes of the Archive are now being supplemented by the ongoing “Finnegans Wake” Notebooks at Buffalo series, the current major Joyce project being undertaken at Buffalo. The Archive merely reproduced images of the notebooks, and with the exception of an introductory essay in each volume, there was no editorial apparatus. In distinction, the Notebooks at Buffalo series is a fully integrated and cross-referenced edition of all the extant Finnegans Wake notebooks. Each volume covers a single notebook and six volumes will be published a year. The project began in 2001 and will continue for more years yet. Each volume has a full, annotated transcription of each notebook, indicating both the sources for individual notebook entries and information about the draft point-of-entry for material that Joyce included into his drafts. Newly-scanned images of each notebook page are also included of a quality that exceeds the reproductions in the Archive. In order to bring about such an ambitious project, Buffalo assembled an international group of leading Wake notebook scholars. Making the notebooks widely available in such a comprehensively-edited fashion will allow for a critical investigation of Joyce’s creative processes that may be unparalleled in the history of literary scholarship.

On display is a copy of the VI.B.10 installment, opened on the first page (item 102, case XIII). Also on display, closed, is the installment for VI.B.29. The cover image is Constantin Brancusi’s 1929 sketch of Joyce (portrait D).