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Ulysses

Ulysses Paperback - 1990

by James Joyce

A classic depiction of exile, estrangement, paralysis, and the disintegration of a society, Ulysses records the events of one average day, June 16, 1904, in the lives of three central figures.

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About this book

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/

Summary

Ulysses is one of the most influential novels of the twentieth century. It was not easy to find a publisher in America willing to take it on, and when Jane Jeap and Margaret Anderson started printing extracts from the book in their literary magazine The Little Review in 1918, they were arrested and charged with publishing obscenity. They were fined $100, and even The New York Times expressed satisfaction with their conviction. Ulysses was not published in book form until 1922, when another American woman, Sylvia Beach, published it in Paris her Shakespeare & Company. Ulysses was not available legally in any English-speaking country until 1934, when Random House successfully defended Joyce against obscenity charges and published it in the Modern Library. This edition follows the complete and unabridged text as corrected and reset in 1961. Judge John Woolsey's decision lifting the ban against Ulysses is reprinted, along with a letter from Joyce to Bennett Cerf, the publisher of Random House, and the original foreword to the book by Morris L. Ernst, who defended Ulysses during the trial.

From the publisher

This revised volume of the acclaimed novel follows the complete unabridged text as corrected in 1961.

Set entirely on one day, 16 June 1904, Ulysses follows Leopold Bloom and Stephen Daedalus as they go about their daily business in Dublin. From this starting point, James Joyce constructs a novel of extraordinary imaginative richness and depth. Unique in the history of literature, Ulysses is one of the most important and enjoyable works of the twentieth century.

This edition contains the original foreword by the author and the historic court ruling to remove the federal ban. It also contains page references to the first American edition of 1934.

From the jacket flap

This revised volume follows the complete unabridged text as corrected in 1961. Contains the original foreword by the author and the historic court ruling to remove the federal ban. It also contains page references to the first American edition of 1934.

First edition identification

Unable to find a publisher in the U.S. or U.K., Ulysses was first published in book form by Shakespeare and Company in Paris in 1922. This first edition appeared in blue and white printed wrappers in an edition of only 1,000 copies which are among the most highly sought after modern first editions, commanding prices in the range of $40,000 - $75,000. A signed first edition could easily fetch over $100,000.

Details

  • Title Ulysses
  • Author James Joyce
  • Binding Paperback
  • Edition [ Edition: Repri
  • Pages 816
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Vintage, New York
  • Date 1990-06-16
  • ISBN 9780679722762 / 0679722769
  • Weight 1.26 lbs (0.57 kg)
  • Dimensions 8.02 x 5.23 x 1.36 in (20.37 x 13.28 x 3.45 cm)
  • Themes
    • Chronological Period: 1960's
  • Library of Congress subjects Domestic fiction, Psychological fiction
  • Library of Congress Catalog Number 89040555
  • Dewey Decimal Code FIC

Media reviews

"Ulysses will immortalize its author with the same certainty that Gargantua immortalized Rabelais, and The Brothers Karamazov immortalized Dostoyevsky.... It comes nearer to being the perfect revelation of a personality than any book in existence."
-The New York Times

"To my mind one of the most significant and beautiful books of our time."
-Gilbert Seldes, in The Nation

"Talk about understanding "feminine psychology"-- I have never read anything to surpass it, and I doubt if I have ever read anything to equal it."
-Arnold Bennett

"In the last pages of the book, Joyce soars to such rhapsodies of beauty as have probably never been equaled in English prose fiction."
-Edmund Wilson, in The New Republic


From the Hardcover edition.

About the author

James Joyce, the twentieth century's most influential novelist, was born in Dublin on February 2, 1882. After receiving a rigorous Jesuit education, twenty-year-old Joyce renounced his Catholicism and left Dublin in 1902 to spend most of his life as a writer in exile in Paris, Trieste, Rome, and Zurich. His writings include Chamber Music (1907), Dubliners (1914), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), Exiles (1918), Ulysses (1922), Pomes Penyeach (1927), and Finnegan's Wake (1939). Ulysses required seven years to complete and Finnegan's Wake, took seventeen. Both works revolutionized the form, structure, and content of the novel. Joyce died in Zurich in 1941.
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