James Joyce

A first edition, first impression of Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce.

• James Joyce (Irish).
• London: Faber & Faber, 1939.
• Large Octavo.
• Trade issue.
• Publisher’s burgundy cloth, titles to spine gilt, yellow topstain, with the unclipped dust-jacket, housed in custom drop-back box.

An exceptionally well-preserved copy of Joyce’s last and most innovative prose work. One of 3,400 sets of sheets for the trade edition of Finnegans Wake which were printed for Faber. Of these, 2,255 were bound and sold at 25 shillings, 950 were destroyed by the publisher, and the remaining were gratis copies. It is possible that the 950 discarded sets of sheets remained unsold because of the price, which Joyce believed was too high.

‘A way alone aloved alost along the…’ If Finnegans Wake is a key book, it is a key which needs a key’ (Connolly). ‘His work is enriched by such large resources of invention and allusion that its total effect is infinite variety’ (Harry Levin).