Dubliners. by JOYCE, James - 1914

London: Grant Richards Ltd,, 1914. One of the very first presentation copies, to a young Triestine lady friend Octavo. Original red cloth, spine and front cover lettered in gilt. Spine ends and corners bumped and very slightly rubbed, small indentation above imprint on spine and light knock to lower edge of front cover; else a near-fine copy. First edition, first impression, first issue, inscribed by the author on the initial blank, "To Beatrice Randegger James Joyce Trieste 19 June 1914". The official publication date in London was a few days earlier, Monday 15 June, but Joyce was in Trieste and did not receive the first of the 120 copies he had agreed to buy from Grant Richards until the Friday of that week. The other very few known presentation copies of the earliest date - to Roberto Preziosi, the Italian who had paid excessive attentions to Nora, and to Moses Dlugacz, his Zionist friend - are dated the same day. This is among the very first presentation copies of the book that Joyce finished composing in Trieste, and a fascinating association. Whether or not the recipient of this copy, born Beatrice Richetti, known to family and friends as Bice, was the alluring, precocious young Jewish lady who inspired the portrait of Joyce's "dark lady" in his Triestine novella Giacomo Joyce, written sometime between 1911 and 1914, must remain open to speculation, but she certainly belonged in that milieu. Bice was one of the daughters of Ettore Richetti, a prominent lawyer and head of the Jewish community in Trieste. Ettore Richetti owned the building at via Vincezzo Scussa, no. 4-6, the neighbouring property to no. 8, where Joyce and Nora rented a first-floor apartment from 25 April 1909 to 24 August 1910. He was a guardian of the Revoltella school where Joyce taught English and business correspondence from October 1913 to the school's temporary closure in June 1915, and again in 1919-20. Professor Giorgio Morpurgo, acting director of the Revoltella who surprised Joyce by hiring him to teach there, was a relation of Ettore's wife, born Clotilde Morpurgo. In 1914 Bice married Henry Victor Randegger (d. 1930), nephew of Alberto Randegger (1832–1911), the famous composer, conductor, and singing teacher who was born in Trieste but lived in London from 1855 until his death. In Joyce's earliest days in Trieste, in a postcard to Stanilaus of 27 May 1905, Joyce cites Randegger as proof of the city's musical credentials. In his long and varied career, Randegger had been professionally associated with an array of people who would become part of Joyce's fictional world, including Barton McGucken (an inspiration for Bartell D'Arcy in "The Dead", the climactic story in Dubliners), William Ludwig (who would appear in the Eumeaus section of Ulysses), and Marie Du Bédat (whose name would form part of the intricate wordplay of Finnegans Wake). In the years before publication of Dubliners, Joyce had supported himself by giving private lessons and by teaching in the evening school of the Società degli impiegati civili. Beatrice seems to have been one of his private pupils. "The young Triestine ladies who took English lessons from Joyce were highly educated and independent and showed a range of qualities not always common in women of their age. They studied music, often attended university (in Vienna, Graz, or Florence); they spoke, in addition to Triestino, at least three languages (Italian, German, and English or French), and were usually widely read … They were emancipated young ladies, who showed little or no interest in religion, and who were well aware of the sexual and intellectual attraction they could exercise over a young man such as Joyce" (McCourt, p. 199). Joyce had previously presented Bice with a copy of the first impression of Chamber Music, his inscription dated 25 October 1911. The first issue of Dubliners comprises 746 sets of sheets bound by Grant Richards and issued in London on 15 June 1914. The remaining 504 sets of the 1,250 printed were shipped to Huebsch in New York, where they were not issued until much later, sometime between 15 December 1916 and 1 January 1917. Slocum & Cahoon A8. John McCourt, The Years of Bloom, Dublin, Lilliput Press, 2001.