A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by Joyce, James - 1916

New York: B. W. Huebsch, 1916. Medium blue cloth, lettered in gilt and blind. Top edge slightly dust darkened, trivial rubbing at crown and toe of spine, but a very near fine copy, in a fragment of the very scarce printed dust jacket. First edition. Although serialized in 25 installments in THE EGOIST from Feb. 1914 to Sept. 1915, British printers and publishers, then still reeling from the suppression of Lawrence's THE RAINBOW, were unreceptive in their responses to Joyce's efforts toward publication in book form. Based in part on Harriet Weaver's guarantee of 750 sets of sheets for the slightly later Egoist Press issue, Huebsch took on the novel for December publication. The size of the first printing may have been reasonably conservative, and a second printing was called for in April 1917. The printed dust jacket for this book is rather scarce; the present fragment consists of the rear flap (blank), the rear panel (an advert for the Huebsch edition of THE PRUSSIAN OFFICER - wanting two significant chips in the blank area), and a portion of the spine (with "AR / AS / YOUNG MAN / JOYCE / $1.50 net" intact). " ... the Portrait can be read as either an autobiography or a novel. A landmark in sensibility, the prose moves forward in complexity from the child's sensations at the beginning to the adolescent subtleties at the end" - Connolly. SLOCUM & CAHOON A11. CONNOLLY MODERN MOVEMENT 26.