Books

London: Elkin Mathews, 1907. Hardcover. Fine. First edition, first issue. 16mo. [40]pp. Light green cloth gilt. Contemporary owner name in blue pencil on front fly, faint soil mark on front board, the lettering on the spine is still bright, thus near fine in a fine example of the publisher's unprinted glassine dust jacket. The very scarce first issue of James Joyce's first trade book, preceded by two broadsides. This is the first binding variant according to Smoot and Cahoon A3: "First variant: Thick laid end papers with horizontal chain lines. 16.2 x 11 cm. Poems in signature C well centered on page." Published in a total edition of 509 copies. According to booksellers Bernard Quaritch (*Bulletin 19* 1984) only "fifty or a hundred" copies of the first variant were bound and issued in 1907. Contemporary presentation copies appear in the first binding, and it certainly seems plausible that, due to low demand, only a small number of copies were bound in 1907.

Chamber Music is James Joyce's first published work, a collection of lyrical poems. The poems, written when Joyce was a young man in his early twenties, evoke the author's youthful infatuation with the lyrical tradition and his dissatisfaction with the impermanence and insincerity of the genre.