JOYCE, James (1882-1941). Finnegans Wake. London: Faber and Faber, 1939.

8vo. Publisher’s gilt-lettered red cloth (spotting to endleaves); original red and yellow dust jacket (some light chipping, short closed tear to foot of front spine fold, slight dustsoiling along top edge).

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.

“’A way alone aloved alost along the…’ If Finnegans Wake is a key book, it is a key which needs a key” (Connolly, The Modern Movement 87). Joyce’s last and most innovative prose work approximates the protean nocturnal dream world. “His work is enriched by such large resources of invention and allusion that its total effect is infinite variety” (Harry Levin, James Joyce: A Critical Interpretation). Slocum & Cahoon A47.

Property from the Collection of Robert S. Brown, Cincinnati, Ohio