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Lot 86D

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Joyce (Lucia, daughter of James

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1½pp. & envelope, 4to, Hotel zum Löwen, Feldkirch, 4th August 1932, regarding the binding of Pomes Penyeach, "I hope you will excuse me for answering only now but I have not been very well lately and am only just beginning to recover. I received a letter from Mr. Kahane [Jack Kahane, publisher, 1887-1939]. He wants me to tell him what kind of a binding I would like for "Pomes Penyeach." I told him I have nothing to do with that and that if my father could not help him he should address himself to Mr. Stuart Gilbert [publisher, friend of James Joyce, 1883-1969] about it. I am glad the book is coming out this month and I do hope it will be a success...", folds.

***"A second Joyce book, this one a deluxe boxed edition (twenty-five copies, numbered, and signed, and priced at a thousand francs) of the already published Pomes Penyeach (Shakespeare and Company, 1927), contributed little to the reputation Kahane was anxiously trying to build. The edition the author asked Kahane to do in conjunction with the British publisher Desmond Harmsworth ('an untidy exquisite,' Kahane said of him, 'dreadfully elusive, and as unlike as possible to what I imagine must be the popular conception of a Harmsworth') was Joyce's gift to his daughter Lucia who, the victim of a nervous breakdown for which physical therapy had been recommended, had created decorative letters for each of her father's poems - extraordinary, multi-colored designs, but unrelated to anything Kahane had ever seen, and even allowing for their 'strangely attractive' nature, hardly suited for a book 'as it is usually conceived'". - Ford. Published in Paris, 1975..

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