Ulysses was first published on 2 February 1922 — Joyce’s fortieth birthday — by Sylvia Beach’s Shakespeare and Company at 12 rue de l’Odéon, Paris. The novel had been serialised in the American magazine The Little Review from 1918, but publication in book form was made impossible in the United States and Britain by obscenity concerns. Beach, the American owner of a Left Bank bookshop, offered to publish it herself. The edition of 1,000 numbered copies was printed by Maurice Darantière in Dijon and issued in the publisher’s blue paper wrappers — now the most famous binding in modern literature.
The Novel
Ulysses follows Leopold Bloom, a Jewish advertising canvasser, through a single day in Dublin: 16 June 1904, a date now celebrated worldwide as Bloomsday. The novel’s eighteen episodes parallel the structure of Homer’s Odyssey, with Bloom as Odysseus, his wife Molly as Penelope, and the young writer Stephen Dedalus (from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man) as Telemachus. But this Homeric scaffolding supports a novel of astonishing formal variety: each episode employs a different narrative technique — stream of consciousness, catechism, newspaper headlines, dramatic dialogue, musical fugue, parody of English literary styles from Anglo-Saxon to the present day.
The novel culminates in Molly Bloom’s soliloquy — an unpunctuated monologue of desire, memory, and affirmation that ends with one of the most famous passages in literature: “and yes I said yes I will Yes.”
Ulysses is the most written-about novel in the English language. It is simultaneously a realistic portrait of Dublin in 1904, a comic epic of ordinary life, an encyclopaedic compendium of narrative techniques, and a profound meditation on love, loss, fatherhood, and the relationship between art and life.
Publication History and the Three Issues
The Shakespeare and Company first edition of 1,000 copies was issued in three states, distinguished by paper stock:
Issue 1 (Nos. 1–100): Printed on Holland handmade paper, signed by Joyce in blue ink on the limitation page. Bound in blue paper wrappers. These are the summit of modernist book collecting — each copy is signed, numbered, and printed on the finest paper. At auction, Issue 1 copies in good condition have sold for $100,000–$400,000. A fine copy could exceed $500,000.
Issue 2 (Nos. 101–250): Printed on vergé d’Arches paper, unsigned. Bound in blue paper wrappers. These are the secondary tier, typically selling for $50,000–$150,000 depending on condition.
Issue 3 (Nos. 251–1000): Printed on handmade paper in the publisher’s blue printed wrappers. This is the most commonly encountered issue of the first edition, but “common” is relative — survival rates are low, and copies in the original wrappers without significant restoration command $20,000–$80,000.
Points of Issue
The first edition contains several bibliographic points that confirm its status:
- The cancel leaves at chapters 6 and 17 are present in all correctly constituted copies. These are replacement pages inserted after printing to correct errors.
- The errata leaf, inserted before the colophon, is integral to the first printing. Copies lacking the errata leaf are considered incomplete and sell at a discount.
- The blue wrappers should bear “ULYSSES” on the front cover in white lettering. The spine bears “ULYSSES by JAMES JOYCE” and “SHAKESPEARE AND COMPANY.”
- The wrappers are notoriously fragile. Fading, chipping, and discolouration are common, and condition of the wrappers is the most significant factor in valuation.
Subsequent Editions
The novel’s publication history after 1922 is as complex as the novel itself:
- Egoist Press, London, 1922: 2,000 copies, printed from the Shakespeare and Company plates in Paris but with the Egoist Press imprint. This is technically the second edition but is sometimes described as a “London issue” of the first.
- Subsequent Shakespeare and Company printings (1922–1930): Multiple printings, some with corrections, none as valuable as the first.
- Random House, New York, 1934: The first legal American edition, published after Judge John M. Woolsey’s landmark ruling in United States v. One Book Called Ulysses (1933) declared the novel not obscene. Fine first editions in the dust jacket bring $2,000–$8,000.
- Bodley Head, London, 1936: The first legal British edition. Fine copies in the jacket bring $1,000–$3,000.
Collecting Ulysses
Ulysses first editions occupy a position in book collecting analogous to Rembrandt in painting — they are the ultimate prestige acquisition. The market is dominated by a small number of institutional and private collectors, and copies rarely appear at auction. When they do, the results are closely watched as indicators of the health of the rare book market.
For collectors who cannot afford the Shakespeare and Company first edition, the 1934 Random House first American edition and the 1936 Bodley Head first British edition are accessible and important — they represent the moments when the novel became legally available in its two primary English-speaking markets. Both are handsome books in their own right and are collected actively.
Joyce signed Ulysses on various occasions beyond the Issue 1 limitation copies. Inscribed copies — to friends, fellow writers, and patrons — appear occasionally at auction and command extraordinary premiums. A copy inscribed to a significant figure in Joyce’s life or in literary modernism could exceed $1,000,000.