Ulysses
This fine edition of Joyce’s great modernist masterpiece contains the most authoritative text to date, and features a series of intricate illustrations by John Vernon Lord.
‘For seven years I have been working at this book – blast it!’ wrote James Joyce in a letter in 1920. What had started out as a short story entitled ‘Ulysses in Dublin’, intended as a rounding-off for Dubliners, had taken him over. Homer’s Odyssey had become the epic model for an epic journey – not this time from Troy to Ithaca, but, in the course of a single day, into the heart of Ireland’s capital. By the end of his journey, Joyce had created one of the greatest novels of the 20th century.
‘It comes nearer to being the perfect revelation of a personality than any book in existence’
- New York Times
For this landmark edition – available only from The Folio Society – Joyce scholars Danis Rose and John O’Hanlon have returned to the original 1922 edition to create the most authoritative text to date. Included is an essay by the editors detailing their methodology, while Joyce expert Stacey Herbert has written a short history of the publication of this most notorious work.
The whole action of the story takes place in Dublin in less than 24 hours, from 8am on Thursday, 16 June 1904, into the small hours of the following morning. It is divided into 18 episodes that parallel (though not slavishly) the adventures of Ulysses as he makes his way back to his wife Penelope and his son Telemachus. In Joyce's story, Leopold Bloom is Ulysses, his wife Molly is Penelope and Stephen Dedalus is Telemachus, and the book begins with the ‘Telemachia’ – Stephen leaving the Martello Tower where he's being staying, after a row with his friend, teaching a class of small boys at a private school, and walking alone on the beach wrestling with his inner thoughts.
Production Details
Bound in blocked cloth with with a blocked leather spine label
Set in Dante
752 pages
Frontispiece and 18 colour illustrations
Metallic silver page tops
Printed map endpapers
Blocked slipcase
11½˝ x 8˝