Ulysses
Paris: [Shakespeare and Company], [c. 1926-1930]. [possible Eighth-Eleventh printing]. Three-quarter red crushed morocco over red pebbled cloth, gilt rules and spine-title, plain endpapers. [3]-735, [1, blank]. Lacking all prelims and title pages. Page edges toned, small stain upper text block edge, light rubbing joints, two spots heavy browning and subsequent acidic translucency from tape repairs to part-title, not affecting inscription, minor penciled marginalia p. 135-149, overall a very good copy. Item #245437
A CONTRABAND ULYSSES...?
Paris, August 1931. Twenty-three-year-old Olive Felt is preparing to return to America after a post-graduate stint studying French at the Sorbonne. Before leaving, she secures an inscription for her copy of the then-banned Ulysses from the woman who first published it: “for Olive Felt / Sylvia Beach / Paris August 1931.” On August 28, she sails from Le Havre aboard the Lafayette, arriving in New York on September 5—almost certainly with her newly inscribed copy of Ulysses tucked in her luggage. Possibly traveling unbound, its identifying preliminaries removed, Beach’s inscription tucked onto the blank verso of the surviving part-title—a book stripped of its most conspicuous declarations of identity, ready to cross a border where its admission remained forbidden.
The surviving evidence suggests a compelling narrative. The inscription and passenger manifest place Beach’s signing and Olive’s departure within the same month, more than two years before Judge Woolsey’s decision of December 6, 1933, permitted the novel’s admission. The missing preliminaries and unusual inscription placement are consistent with a copy prepared for discreet passage, although the circumstances of their removal remain undocumented.
Now bound in three-quarter red morocco over red pebbled cloth, the volume bears Olive’s bookplate under her subsequent married name, Olive Felt Kennedy, and was acquired directly from her daughter. Whether carried openly or concealed in her luggage, it preserves an intimate connection to the years when reading Joyce could require a journey—and bringing him home could require ingenuity.
Copies of Ulysses inscribed by Beach are exceptionally scarce. Here, her dated inscription, the recipient’s documented transatlantic passage, the suggestive removal of the preliminaries, and the volume’s descent through her family give this copy particular resonance as a possible witness to the novel’s clandestine circulation. A very good and extremely intriguing early printing (eighth - eleventh printing, based on collation and pagination).
[Slocum & Cahoon A.17].
Price: $15,000.00