Our exagmination round his factification

Octavo of 194 pp., 1 l. original white wrappers printed in black; a superb copy.

203 X 148 mm.

Joyce, James. Beckett, Samuel… Our exagmination round his factification for incamination of work in progress.

Paris, Shakespeare and Company, 1929.

First edition, first impression, large paper issue.

Slocum & Cahoon B10 ; Federman & Fletcher, Samuel Beckett, His Works and his Critics, p.3.

This is copy 91 of 96 numbered copies printed on Verge d'Arches.

This early critique of Joyce's final work was published some 10 years prior to the publication of the finished novel. Part of the incentive to publish was apparently to raise funds for the perennially impecunious Joyce. A myth surrounding this work is that one or both of the two letters of protest were written by Joyce himself. However both authors existed - indeed Beach herself commissioned Slingsby. Dixon's effort - which is marvellous - was an unsolicited one by a Russian émigré who was to die in Paris in 1929, just as the book was published.

The last of Beach's Joyce publications. The "Letters of Protest" are by Joyce and Beach, wirting under pseudonyms.

Called by Richard Ellmann the "first apologia" for "Finnegans Wake," this is Sylvia Beach's third and last Joyce publication, the Shakespeare & Company printing of 12 studies by well-known writers dealing with Joyce's linguistic innovations in the published installments of the experimental "Work in Progress," which was to become "Finnegans Wake."

The dozen writers, all of whom were supporters of the project, included Samuel Beckett, Marcel Brion, Frank Budgen, Stuart Gilbert, Eugene Jolas, Victor Llona, Robert McAlmon, Thomas McGreevy, Elliot Paul, John Rodker, Robert Sage, and William Carlos Williams.

The section by Beckett constitutes his first appearance in print. There are also two letters here finding fault with the writing, one of them apparently written by Joyce himself, and there are a number of quotations from the work, including a section (on Swift and blindness) that did not make it into the final version of the novel.

This special limited version is uncommonly seen for sale.

A superb unopened copy on large paper of this important step in the writing process of Finnegans wake, preserved in wrappers as issued.