A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. by JOYCE, James

New York: B. W. Huebsch, 1916. 8vo, blue publisher's cloth with lettering in blind to upper cover and lettering in gilt to spine; pp. [iv], 299, [i]; cloth a little rubbed at edges and corners, and particularly to head and foot of spine; internal front hinge tender; else a very good copy, internally very clean. First edition. Originally appearing serially in twenty-one monthly instalments in the British literary magazine The Egoist, Joyce’s semi-autobiographical text was first published in the US, after UK printers refused to accept the liability of printing the text due to reader’s critical reactions. The exact number of copies is unknown, but it is estimated that fewer than one thousand were produced. This copy precedes the first English edition by two months. The stream-of-consciousness narrative describes the protagonist Stephen Dedalus’ spiritual journey through his Jesuit education to adulthood. Joyce had originally intended the novel to be published under the title Stephen Hero , but abandoned the work in 1907 when it was half finished, to begin a complete revision of the text and its structure. In 1911 Joyce flew into a fit of rage over the continued refusals by publishers to print Dubliners and threw the manuscript of Portrait into the fire. It was saved by a "family fire brigade" including his sister Eileen. In 1917 H. G. Wells wrote that "one believes in Stephen Dedalus as one believes in few characters in fiction." A sound copy of the author’s first novel.