Our Exagmination Round His Factification For Incamination of Work in Progress [Finnegans Wake] by [James Joyce] BECKETT, Samuel; Marcel Brion, Frank Budgen, Stuart Gilbert, Eugene Jolas, Victor Llona, Robert McAlmon, Thomas McGreevy, Elliot Paul, John Rodker, Robert Sage, and William Carlos Williams. [Letters of Protest by G. V. L. Slingsby and Vladim - 1929

Paris: Shakespeare and Company, 1929. First Edition. Original Wraps. Near Fine. First Trade Impression, one of only 200 copies (96 numbered copies were printed on untrimmed Vergé d'Arches), with loosely inserted publisher's compliments slip. Crown 8vo (191 x 140mm): [6],194,[2]pp. Publisher's original cream wrappers printed in black, upper cover with wheel device, title on circle and (alphabetically and clockwise) the twelve authors's names as spokes. Wrappers lightly marked and toned, page edges embrowned, small closed tear to fore-edge of one leaf with archival repair. An excellent example. Not to be confused with later issues by Faber & Faber and New Directions, which purchased sheets of this original edition and issued reprints with title pages of their own. Slocum & Cahoon B10. Federman & Fletcher 1. An early collection of critical essays of Joyce's radically experimental final work (at that time being published in discrete sections under the title Work in Progress), along with brief quotations from the Work In Progress (including a passage concerning Swift and blindness never incorporated into the finished novel) and two letters of protest. Part of the incentive to publish was apparently to raise funds for the perennially impecunious author. A myth surrounding this work is that the letters of protest were written by Joyce; in fact, Sylvia Beach commissioned G. V .L. Slingsby, but Stuart Gilbert and Beach believed that Vladimir Dixon's marvelous unsolicited contribution, purportedly written by a Russian émigré who died in Paris just as the book went to press, was the work of Joyce himself. Beckett's essay is his first appearance in print. N. B. With few exceptions (always identified), we only stock books in exceptional condition, carefully preserved in archival, removable mylar sleeves. All orders are packaged with care and posted promptly. Satisfaction guaranteed. (Fine Editions Ltd is a member of the Independent Online Booksellers Association, and we subscribe to its codes of ethics.).