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53 JOYCE, James. Tales Told of Shem and Shaun. Three Fragments from Work in Progress. Paris: Black Sun Press, 1929 First edition, number 17 of 100 copies signed by Joyce and printed on japon, this a particularly handsome example in the Black Sun Press’s striking metallic slipcase. Preceded by Anna Livia Plurabelle (1928), this is the second separately published portion of what was to become Finnegans Wake (1939). It contains “The Mookse and the Gripes”, “The Muddest Thick that was ever heard dump”, and “The Ondt and
the Gracehoper”. It also includes introductory comments on Joyce’s use of language by C. K. Ogden, the inventor of Basic English and the co-author of The Meaning of Meaning (1923). The total edition comprised 650 copies, of which 100 were issued thus; 500 unsigned copies were printed on Holland paper; and 50 copies were not released for sale. Small quarto. Original white paper wrappers, titles to spine and front cover in red and black, publisher’s device in black to rear cover. With original glassine wrapper and publisher’s green suede and metallic slipcase. Housed in a black morocco backed slipcase and chemise. Frontispiece abstract portrait of the artist by Brancusi, with glassine guard. A fine copy, fresh inside and out, with a perfect glassine. The fragile slipcase is a little rubbed at extremities and the suede somewhat toned, but nonetheless in unusually good condition. ¶ Slocum & Cahoon A36. £8,750 [153764] 54 JOYCE, James. Finnegans Wake. London: Faber and Faber, 1939 First edition, first impression, trade issue, of Joyce’s final work. “The most conspicuous innovation of Finnegans Wake is its use of ‘dream-language’. After Ulysses Joyce believed that he had ‘come to the end of English’, and his last novel is a pervasive layering of multilingual puns in successive drafts which produces a fabric rich in semantic possibilities” ( ODNB ). A signed limited edition was also published on the same date; 3,400 copies of the standard trade edition were printed, of which 950 were destroyed. Octavo. Original red cloth, lettering to spine in gilt, top edge yellow, others untrimmed. With dust jacket. Some tiny closed tears along jacket edges, but an exceptionally nice example, some light foxing to edges and endpapers, excellent condition. ¶ Slocum & Cahoon A47; Connolly, The Modern Movement , 1965, 87. £4,750 [153771]
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INEXHAUSTIBLE LIFE
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