A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man
London: Egoist Press, 1916. First Edition. Hardcover. 1st edition, 1st printing of Joyce’s first novel, the establishment of modernism. 2nd issue with the London title page, binding and dustjacket. Concern over suppression of Joyce’s earlier book of stories (Dubliners), and blowback against the 1914–1915 serialization of Portrait of the Artist in The Egoist Magazine, moved Harriet Shaw Weaver, proprietor of The Egoist Press, to have the entire 1st printing done in the U. S. by the American publisher (Huebsch), and then have them send a small portion (less than 750 copies) of the unbound 1st printing sheets to England for publication there of the 1st edition with a different title page, binding and dustjacket (the NY issue was published Dec. 29, but the exact date of the London issue is unrecorded). By 1917 legal opposition (but not moral objections) had melted away (the distractions of the war) and in April 1917, The Egoist Press printed and bound a 2nd edition entirely in the UK. Fine in a neatly restored dustjacket, the book is so new looking as to leave no doubt that it was covered by this dustjacket all its life, and the jacket is so fresh that the restoration seems to have been only necessary because the jacket is printed on especially thin paper and that is why it is such a renown rarity, with only 6 or so copies known in dustjacket. Fine / Good. Item #332
In Portrait of the Artist Joyce reworked the coming of age novel to set free his unconventionality, but of his 3 novels (with Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake) it is the most approachable and accessible. His hero, Stephen Daedalus’ very name implies one of Joyce’s major motifs, flight. The style is a mix of free indirect speech and third person narrative promoting themes like the development of individual consciousness, identity, religion, the role of the artist, Irish autonomy, and the myth of Daedalus and Icarus. The book has subtle symbols but 2 are more prominent than the others, Emma Clery, a young woman whom Stephen barely knows (pure love), and Green and Maroon (Stephen’s governess, Dante, and Irish politics).
Price:
$50,000.00