Ulysses.

Paris: Shakespeare and Company,, 1922. Luxurious issue of the defining modernist novel First edition, number 220 of 150 copies from the large-paper issue numbered 101-250, here finely bound by Sangorski & Sutcliffe with Irish motifs and with the distinctive original blue wrappers bound in. As recorded in Sylvia Beach's notebook, kept from 21 May 1921 to 1 July 1922 to account for the original customers of Ulysses, this copy was ordered by Sybil Amhurst on 11 May 1922. The watercolourist Sybil Margaret Tyssen-Amhurst (1858-1926), of Didlington Hall in Norfolk, came from the family of book and antique collectors whose Egyptian artefacts inspired the young Howard Carter. The family later recommended him for missions in Egypt, setting in motion his discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922, the same year that Ulysses was published. Sybil Amhurst also travelled to Egypt: "Once, deep inside a tomb in the Valley of the Kings, the metallic smoke blew into Sybil's eyes and she inhaled a lung full of fumes. On the verge of blacking out, she had to be hurriedly carried to fresh air" (Duggan, p. 28). The edition comprised 1,000 copies published on 2 February in the traditional three-tiered French format aimed at both connoisseurs and readers. There were 100 signed copies printed on Dutch handmade paper, 150 copies on the larger vergé d'Arches (sometimes called the 'giant Joyce'), and 750 copies on vergé à barbes forming the trade issue. Perhaps the key text of 20th-century English literature, the book also proved a major test case for laws of freedom of expression. "Forced underground by censors,... this was a cryptoclassic already before it was read, a subversive colossus" (Sherry, p. 1). Its creator is one of the great literary geniuses: "Joyce, not to mince words, is Ireland's Shakespeare, its Goethe, its Racine, its Tolstoy" (Sutherland). Quarto (264 x 200 mm). Finely bound by Sangorski & Sutcliffe in dark brown morocco, spine lettered in gilt, three raised bands dividing gilt-ruled compartments, covers with gilt rule enclosing shamrock cornerpieces, board edges and turn-ins ruled in gilt, original wrappers bound in at end. Housed in custom brown quarter morocco folding box by the Chelsea Bindery. Loosely inserted newspaper clipping and sheet (New York Times, 11 February 1934) discussing the publication history of Ulysses in Europe and America. A little rubbing, neatly retouched, browning to free endpapers from turn-ins, sporadic faint foxing and spots to contents. A very handsome copy. Horowitz, Census, p. 121; Slocum & Cahoon A17. Brian Patrick Duggan, Saluki: The Desert Hound and the English Travelers Who Brought It to the West, 2014; Vincent Sherry, Joyce: Ulysses, 2004; John Sutherland, "Ireland's Shakespeare", The Guardian, 10 Feb. 2004.