Ulysses

by James Joyce

Overview

Ulysses is one of the most influential novels of the twentieth century. It was not easy to find a publisher in America willing to take it on, and when Jane Jeap and Margaret Anderson started printing extracts from the book in their literary magazine The Little Review in 1918, they were arrested and charged with publishing obscenity. They were fined $100, and even The New York Times expressed satisfaction with their conviction.

Ulysses was not published in book form until 1922, when another American woman, Sylvia Beach, published it in Paris her Shakespeare & Company. Ulysses was not available legally in any English-speaking country until 1934, when Random House successfully defended Joyce against obscenity charges and published it in the Modern Library.

This edition follows the complete and unabridged text as corrected and reset in 1961. Judge John Woolsey's decision lifting the ban against Ulysses is reprinted, along with a letter from Joyce to Bennett Cerf, the publisher of Random House, and the original foreword to the book by Morris L. Ernst, who defended Ulysses during the trial.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9789362095725
Publisher:	Alpha Edition
Publication date:	08/06/2024
Pages:	658
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.45(d)

About the Author

James Joyce (1882 - 1941) was born in Dublin, Ireland, to a well-meaning but financially inept father and a solemn, pious mother. One of the most revered writers of the 20th century, he was noted for his experimental use of language in his works. His first publication, an essay on Ibsen’s play, appeared in the Fortnightly Review in 1900. In 1904, he made his first attempt at a novel, Stephen Hero, and also attempted to publish A Portrait of the Artist, an essay-story dealing with aesthetics, only to have it rejected.
At the outset of the First World War, Joyce moved to Zurich, where he wrote Exiles, reworked on the early chapters of Ulysses, and published A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in a serial form. It appeared in twenty-five instalments in The Egoist. Almost a complete rewrite of the abandoned Stephen Hero, it is heavily autobiographical incorporating the techniques of stream of consciousness and interior monologue.

Date of Birth:

February 2, 1882

Date of Death:

January 13, 1941

Place of Birth:

Dublin, Ireland

Place of Death:

Zurich, Switzerland

Education:

B.A., University College, Dublin, 1902

Website:

http://www.jamesjoyce.ie

Read an Excerpt

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned:

—Introibo ad altare Dei.

Halted, he peered down the dark winding stairs and called up coarsely:

—Come up, Kinch. Come up, you fearful jesuit.

Solemnly he came forward and mounted the round gunrest. He faced about and blessed gravely thrice the tower, the surrounding country and the awaking mountains. Then, catching sight of Stephen Dedalus, he bent towards him and made rapid crosses in the air, gurgling in his throat and shaking his head. Stephen Dedalus, displeased and sleepy, leaned his arms on the top of the staircase and looked coldly at the shaking gurgling face that blessed him, equine in its length, and at the light untonsured hair, grained and hued like pale oak.

Buck Milligan peeped an instant under the mirror and then covered the bowl smartly.

—Back to barracks, he said sternly.

He added in a preacher's tone:

—For this, O dearly beloved, is the genuine Christine: body and soul and blood and ouns. Slow music, please. Shut your eyes, gents. One moment. A little trouble about those white corpuscles. Silence, all. 

He peered sideways up and gave a long low whistle of call, then paused awhile in rapt attention, his even white teeth glistening here and there with gold points. Chrysostomos. Two strong shrill whistles answered through the calm. 

—Thanks, old chap, he cried briskly. That will do nicely. Switch off the current, will you?

He skipped off the gunrest and looked gravely at his watcher, gathering about his legs the loose folds of his gown. The plump shadowed face and sullen oval jowl recalled a prelate, patron of arts in the middle ages. A pleasant smile broke quietly over his lips.

—The mockery of it, he said gaily. Your absurd name, an ancient Greek.

Table of Contents

Map: Dublin c. 1904
Abbreviations
Introduction
Composition and Publication History
Select Bibliography
A Chronology of James Joyce
ULYSSES
Appendix A: The Gilbert and Linati Schemata
Appendix B: Ulysses: Serialization and Editions
Appendix C: Errata
Explanatory Notes

What People are Saying About This

Edmund Wilson

One of the most remarkable features of Ulysses is its interest as an investigation into the nature of human consciousness and behavior...Joyce has studied what we are accustomed to consider the dirty, the trivial and the base elements in our lives with the restlessness of a modern psychologist; and he has also...done justice to all those elements in our lives which we have been in the habit of describing by such names as love, nobility, truth and beauty.

From the Publisher

"Ulysses will immortalize its author with the same certainty that Gargantua immortalized Rabelais, and The Brothers Karamazov immortalized Dostoyevsky.... It comes nearer to being the perfect revelation of a personality than any book in existence."
-The New York Times

"To my mind one of the most significant and beautiful books of our time."
-Gilbert Seldes, in The Nation

"Talk about understanding "feminine psychology"— I have never read anything to surpass it, and I doubt if I have ever read anything to equal it."
-Arnold Bennett

"In the last pages of the book, Joyce soars to such rhapsodies of beauty as have probably never been equaled in English prose fiction."
-Edmund Wilson, in The New Republic

Introduction

The 100 Best English Language Novels of the Century

"We tried to pick books that were of great merit and proven over time." -- Christopher Cerf, chairman of the Modern Library Editorial Board

On Monday, July 20th, the editorial board of the Modern Library released a list of the 100 best English-language novels of the century. Topping the list was Ulysses, the unique, original novel that recounts a day in the lives of a group of Dubliners. The same book that was banned in the United States from 1920 to 1933 for obscenity now tops the list of novels written in English in this century, followed in descending order by The Great Gatsby, A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man, Lolita, and Brave New World.

The editorial board that created this list comprised Christopher Cerf, Gore Vidal, Daniel J. Boorstin, Shelby Foote, Vartan Gregorian, A. S. Byatt, Edmund Morris, John Richardson, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., and William Styron. The top five novels originally tied for first place, all selected by nine out of ten editorial board members. Then, in another vote, the board members listed the books in order, resulting in the conclusive top five.

All the judges agreed that Ulysses was deserving of the rank of top book of the century. James Joyce was a brilliant author who, many think, ignited modern literature much as Picasso ignited 20th-century art. Joyce spent seven years working on this novel, as evidenced in his masterful prose. But is it the best English-language novel of the 20th century? Why are there only eight women on the list of 100? Is Catcher In the Rye really the 64th best novel of our century?

Editorial Reviews

Ulysses is the most important contribution that has been made to fictional literature in the twentieth century. . . It is likely that there is no one writing English today that could parallel Mr. Joyce's feat, and it is also likely that few would care to do it were it capable. -- Books of the Century; New York Times review, May 1922

New York Times Book Review

"Ulysses will immortalize its author with the same certainty that Gargantua immortalized Rabelais, and The Brothers Karamazov immortalized Dostoyevsky.... It comes nearer to being the perfect revelation of a personality than any book in existence."
-The New York Times

"To my mind one of the most significant and beautiful books of our time."
-Gilbert Seldes, in The Nation

"Talk about understanding "feminine psychology"— I have never read anything to surpass it, and I doubt if I have ever read anything to equal it."
-Arnold Bennett

"In the last pages of the book, Joyce soars to such rhapsodies of beauty as have probably never been equaled in English prose fiction."
-Edmund Wilson, in The New Republic

From the Publisher