Ulysses. by JOYCE, James - 1922

Paris: Shakespeare and Company,, 1922. Small quarto. Original blue wrappers, titles to cover in white. Housed in a custom blue quarter morocco and cloth solander box and blue cloth chemise. The lithographed colour has failed to print along the edge of the inside rear flap, a print shop accident not affecting the external appearance. Wrappers a little darkened, slightly rubbed and nicked to extremities, skilful paper restoration visible only under raking light to short split at head of rear joint and at a narrow angle across the spine, tiny repair to nick at head of front joint, faint offsetting to endpapers, contents fresh with a couple of leaves unopened. An excellent copy. First edition, first issue, no. 82 of 100 copies signed by Joyce and printed on Dutch handmade paper. Ulysses was published in imitation of the traditional three-tiered French format aimed at both connoisseurs and readers: 100 signed copies on Dutch handmade paper; 150 large paper copies printed on heavier vergé d'Arches, and 750 copies on vergé à barbes forming the smaller trade issue. Ulysses was published on 2 February 1922. Sylvia Beach's notebook records that this copy was sold to the Chelsea Book Club on 8 June, a bookshop and art gallery in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, London, which stocked English and French literature. It was the first bookshop in England to sell Ulysses in 1922. Leslie Seymour, who took over management of the shop from Aldous Huxley, noted: "'we've sold in advance twenty-one copies of the first edition of James Joyce's book at £3.10.0 a copy... and the Chelsea Book Club will be the only people in England to have it, for I was in Sylvia Beach's little shop in the Rue de l'Odeon today and took a packing-case of copies from her. She explained it had been returned from some other London bookshop, badly damaged apparently by a pick wielded by the Customs, I would have to to take the risk of any spoilt copies'" (Leslie, p. 110).