Dubliners.

JOYCE, James.

Item Number: 109828

London: Grant Richards, 1914.

Rare first edition of Joyce’s first prose work, his great collection of short stories. One of only 1250 sheets printed (499 of which were sunk en route to America). Octavo, original red cloth. In very good condition with the rubbing to the extremities, name to the front free endpaper. Housed in a custom slipcase.

James Joyce’s Dubliners is a vivid and unflinching portrait of “dear dirty Dublin” at the turn of the twentieth century. These fifteen stories, including such unforgettable ones as “Araby,” “Grace,” and “The Dead,” delve into the heart of the city of Joyce’s birth, capturing the cadences of Dubliners’ speech and portraying with an almost brute realism their outer and inner lives. Dubliners is Joyce at his most accessible and most profound. Few texts have traveled such a rocky road to publication. Dubliners was first accepted by the publisher Grant Richards in February 1906, but the printer objected to certain passages and refused to do the job, as under English law "the printer of objectionable material is as guilty of breaking the law as the publisher, and equally subject to criminal prosecution" (Ellmann, 220). In 1910 Maunsel and Co. agreed to publish the book; again certain passages were found objectionable and Joyce made alterations. This time the firm of John Falconer printed 1000 copies but then, with the exception of the page proofs, promptly burned the entire edition. In 1913 Joyce again offered the book to Elkin Mathews who again turned it down. Finally Grant Richards decided to accept the book a second time, with a contract stipulating no royalties on the first 500 copies and a guarantee by Joyce to buy 120 copies himself. Only 1250 sets of sheets were printed for the first edition and 504 of those sets were sold to the New York publisher B.W. Huebsch for the first American edition. "It has also been reported that in 1915 Grant Richards sold without Joyce's knowledge 500 sets of [the original 1250] Dubliners sheets to Albert and Charles Boni of New York… A new title page was prepared for the New York imprint, and 499 copies were shipped to New York on the S.S. Arabic which was torpedoed in August 1915. All copies were lost except one which Albert Boni kept in his personal possession" (Slocum & Cahoon A8).