Paris: Shakespeare and Company, 1922. First edition. One of 750 copies on handmade paper, from the wider first edition limitation of 1,000 copies. Based on Sylvia Beach’s records, it has been asserted that, out of the three issues of the first edition, this one was sent out first. This copy marked as number 482. Modern blue half morocco gilt over marbled boards, bookplate of Giles Alexander Esme Gordon to front pastedown. Front free endpaper with some marginal restoration, a few small unrestored closed tears to preliminary leaves, a little occasional foxing, a few gatherings a little roughly opened. Housed in a custom morocco-backed clamshell case. A Very Good+ copy.

Arguably the key text of the Modernist movement. “Joyce, not to mince words, is Ireland’s Shakespeare, its Goethe, its Racine, its Tolstoy” (John Sutherland). The book also proved to be a major test case for laws of freedom of expression. “Forced underground by censors, this was a cryptoclassic already before it was read, a subversive colossus” (Sherry).

Provenance: Giles Gordon was a literary agent and writer, working for publishers Secker & Warburg and Gollancz (the latter as Editorial Director) before representing writers such as Peter Ackroyd and Vikram Seth.

Slocum and Cahoon A17. (7586) Very Good + (Item #7586)