Some copies of this first edition made it through to the US and England, but when detected by customs officers were confiscated and often burnt. It was more than a decade before US courts determined in United States v. One Book Called Ulysses (1933) that the book was acceptable as the controversial elements served an important artistic purpose, namely Joyce’s use of stream of consciousness.
This paved the way for a most intriguing edition. In 1935, the Limited Editions Club of New York brought it out with illustrations by French artist Henri Matisse. Matisse’s six etchings are all the more remarkable since he never actually read the book. Instead, he went back to the inspirational source and provided depictions of the Cyclops, Nausicaa, Calypso, Ithaca, Aeolus, and Circe incidents from Homer’s Odyssey.
The edition was ultimately published in a run of 1,000 copies. Heritage Auctions will offer one of only 250 copies signed by both Matisse and Joyce, in the original publisher’s slipcase.
Shortly thereafter, in 1936, The Bodley Head in London brought out the first authorized English edition, a sumptuous book printed on mould-made paper and bound in calf vellum with a Homeric bow binding design by Eric Gill. Heritage Auctions has one of just 100 copies signed by the author and in the original publisher’s slipcase.
Though the publishers claimed this as the “final and definitive” edition, Joyce continued to find errors and make corrections. This brings us to the fourth edition in the Heritage Auctions sale, the monumental 1988 Arion Press printing, bound in white pigskin over white-flecked blue cloth with etchings by American abstract expressionist painter Robert Motherwell, a Joyce enthusiast. Again, it comes in the original publisher’s slipcase, one of 150 copies for sale, and is signed by Motherwell to the limitation page.
In addition to the four Ulysses editions above, the auction will also feature a first edition of Dubliners, a presentation copy to Raymonde Linossier of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the scarce first edition of Chamber Music, and a first edition of Finnegans Wake in jacket, among many others.
