Dubliners by Joyce, James - 1914

London: Grant Richards, 1914. First edition. Very Good +. One of 746 copies printed for Grant Richards. Original dark red cloth, gilt lettering on spine and front cover. Very Good+ copy with a few small blemishes to the cloth and a bit of penciled bookseller notations on the end papers that could be removed. A handsome copy of a scarce and important work.

Joyce's first work of fiction, comprising fifteen short stories, including "Dubliners," "The Dead," and "Araby." The collection was initially submitted to Richards in 1905, after which two attempts to publish it were thwarted by censorship before this first edition in 1914. According to Day, Joyce "intended ‘to betray the soul of that hemiplegia or paralysis which many consider a city'; the paralysis is intellectual, moral, and spiritual." The work "is militantly opposed to the contemporary Celtic Renaissance. To the dreamy or patriotic effusions of his fellow Irishmen, Joyce countered with uncompromising depictions of the Irish decay, banality, and tawdriness."

Slocum and Cahoon A-8. Very Good +.