Books

First edition, first impression, first issue. This is an unusually nice copy of the author's masterful short story debut, his first major work and second book overall. The final story, "The Dead", has been described by T. S. Eliot and others as among the finest ever written. "In its lyrical, melancholy acceptance of all that life and death offer, 'The Dead' is a linchpin in Joyce's work" (Ellmann, Biography, p. 252). Joyce spent years battling the publishers to release the book in uncensored form, stating that no artist should dare "to alter in the presentment, still more to deform, what he has seen or heard" (letter of 5 May 1906) and defending the stories as a "first step towards the spiritual liberation of my country" (20 May 1906). The first issue of Dubliners comprised 746 sets of sheets bound by Grant Richards and issued in London. The remaining 504 sets of the 1,250 printed were shipped to Huebsch in New York, where they were not issued until much later, sometime between 15 December 1916 and 1 January 1917. Octavo. Original red cloth, spine and front cover lettered in gilt. Housed in a burgundy quarter morocco solander box by the Chelsea Bindery. Gilt bright, cloth slightly darkened, with a couple of marks, else sharp, front inner hinge split but firm, edges and margins foxed, text unaffected and clean: a very good copy. Slocum & Cahoon A8. Richard Ellmann, ed., Letters of James Joyce, 1966, vol. II, p. 134; idem, James Joyce, 1983; Stuart Gilbert, ed., Letters of James Joyce, 1957, p. 63.

Dubliners is a collection of fifteen short stories by James Joyce, first published in 1914. They form a naturalistic depiction of Irish middle-class life in and around Dublin in the early years of the 20th century.