Ulysses
James Joyce, Erroll McDonald (Editor), Morris L. ErnstBooks.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.
Overview
Ulysses is one of the most influential novels of the twentieth century. It was not easy to find a publisher in America willing to take it on, and when Jane Jeap and Margaret Anderson started printing extracts from the book in their literary magazine The Little Review in 1918, they were arrested and charged with publishing obscenity. They were fined $100, and even The New York Times expressed satisfaction with their conviction.Ulysses was not published in book form until 1922, when another American woman, Sylvia Beach, published it in Paris her Shakespeare & Company. Ulysses was not available legally in any English-speaking country until 1934, when Random House successfully defended Joyce against obscenity charges and published it in the Modern Library.
This edition follows the complete and unabridged text as corrected and reset in 1961. Judge John Woolsey's decision lifting the ban against Ulysses is reprinted, along with a letter from Joyce to Bennett Cerf, the publisher of Random House, and the original foreword to the book by Morris L. Ernst, who defended Ulysses during the trial.
This revised volume follows the complete unabridged text as corrected in 1961. Contains the original foreword by the author and the historic court ruling to remove the federal ban. It also contains page references to the first American edition of 1934.
Synopsis
Ulysses has been the subject of controversy since copies of the first English edition were burned by the New York Post Office Authorities. Today critical interest centers on the authority of the text. This edition republishes, for the first time, without interference, the original 1922 text. Jeri Johnson's critical Introduction demystifies the complexities of the book, and a full textual publication history, helpful appendices, and explanatory notes guide the reader through this highly allusive text.
New York Times Book Review
Ulysses is the most important contribution that has been made to fictional literature in the twentieth century. . . It is likely that there is no one writing English today that could parallel Mr. Joyce's feat, and it is also likely that few would care to do it were it capable. -- Books of the Century; New York Times review, May 1922
Editorials
New York Times Book Review
Ulysses is the most important contribution that has been made to fictional literature in the twentieth century. . . It is likely that there is no one writing English today that could parallel Mr. Joyce's feat, and it is also likely that few would care to do it were it capable. -- Books of the Century; New York Times review, May 1922From the Publisher
"Ulysses will immortalize its author with the same certainty that Gargantua immortalized Rabelais, and The Brothers Karamazov immortalized Dostoyevsky.... It comes nearer to being the perfect revelation of a personality than any book in existence."-The New York Times
"To my mind one of the most significant and beautiful books of our time."
-Gilbert Seldes, in The Nation
"Talk about understanding "feminine psychology"— I have never read anything to surpass it, and I doubt if I have ever read anything to equal it."
-Arnold Bennett
"In the last pages of the book, Joyce soars to such rhapsodies of beauty as have probably never been equaled in English prose fiction."
-Edmund Wilson, in The New Republic
Matt Travers
The countless admirers of James Joyce and his awe-inspiring Ulysses will be delighted by the appearance of this magnificently faithful and lavishly produced twenty-first century edition.—Matt Travers