Books

FIRST ENGLISH EDITION, trade issue, one of 3,400 sets of sheets for the trade edition of Finnegans Wake which were printed for Faber and Faber. Of these, 2,255 were bound and sold at 25 shillings, 950 were destroyed by the publisher, and the remaining were gratis copies. It is possible that the 950 discarded sets of sheets remained unsold because of the price, which Joyce believed was too high.

Finnegans Wake is a novel by Irish writer James Joyce. It is significant for its experimental style and reputation as one of the most difficult works in the Western canon. The book, Joyce's final and most avant-garde work, is structured as a sort of feverish dream containing multilingual puns, numerous literary and historical allusions, and a rich tapestry of themes.