[Rarebooks] FS: A Beautiful Ulysses: 1936 Bodley Head. Eric Gill Design

[Ezra Tishman]

Ezra from Aardvark offers this lovely copy of Joyce’s Ulysses, which has been called “One of the most important works of Modernist literature.”
Irish writer and literary scholar Declan Kiberd wrote (The Guardian, June 28, 2011) that “Before Joyce, no writer of fiction had so foregrounded the process of thinking” Looking at the publication history below, it’s remarkable that any copies survived the purge of propriety. 


ULYSSES by James Joyce.  London, John Lane The Bodley Head, 1936.

Quarto, Forest Green boards with design featuring Eric Gill's design of a strung recurve bow to front board, in gilt. Beige dustjacket repeats design, in bright and beautiful red. Limited,numbered edition (#601 out of 900 copies) printed on Japon Vellum paper, and bound in Linen Buckram. Two corners very slightly nudged, and minor shelf rubbing to extremities. Top edge gilt, fore-edge and tail untrimmed. Light toning to both free endpapers.  [xvi] 766 pp. Preliminary pages xiii to xvi, unopened. Dustjacket fully intact, with just a trifle of wear to extremities. Faint teardrop-shaped stain to dustjacket spine.   Housed in sturdy publisher's beige companion slipcase, with contrasting black leather spine label ("Ulysses / Joyce"), ruled in gilt. Interior of slipcase patterned in brown, grey and white.

This eighth (overall) edition of Ulysses, preceded by: 1) Shakespeare and Company in Paris (February 1922, 1000 numbered copies); The Egoist Press, London (October, 1922 -- 2000 numbered copies, of which 500 copies were burned by the New York Post Office Authorities); The Egoist Press, London (January 1923 -- 500 numbered copies,of which 499 copies were seized by the Customs Authorities, Folkestone); Shakespeare and Company, Paris (January, 2024, Unlimited edition); The Odyssey Press, Paris, Hamburg, Bologna (December 1932, Unlimited Edition); Random House, New York (January 1934, Unlimited Edition); Limited Editions Club, New York (October, 1935 -- 1500 copies, illustrated and signed by Henri Matisse).


Not only was the book and its writer the topic
of scandal and the object of legal censure, but the famed sculptor and designer who created the stunning and timeless design for this book, Eric Rowton Gill — essentially the artistic heir to William Morris and the Arts and Crafts Movement — was himself a person of notoriety, though mostly today. Today we readily toss out artistic merit when poor behavior in the artist’s personal lives offend the senses. Gill was a sexual predator who sexually abused his two daughters, and had sex with his sister Gladys most of his adult life. This isn’t the forum to further argue the necessary distinctions to be made or overlooked between a
great artist and his or her personal habits, except to say this book was the subject of massive censorship effort.


																		A lovely copy in jacket. Very Good Plus in Like Jacket.  $6500