James Joyce Signed Limited 1st Edition "Finnegans Wake"

JOYCE, James. Finnegans Wake. London and New York: Faber & Faber and The Viking Press, 1939. Large octavo, original red cloth, top edge gilt, uncut and partly unopened. Housed in a custom clamshell box.  Signed limited first edition, American issue, of Joyce’s “inscription on the walls of eternity,” number 188 of only 310 large-paper copies for America (of a total edition of 435 copies) signed by Joyce.  Without scarce original slipcase. Slocum & Cahoon 49. Light toning to spine. A near-fine copy.

Finnegans Wake stands as “Joyce’s last and most innovative prose work, written in a revolutionary narrative style that approximates the protean nocturnal dream world… [that gave] Joyce the freedom he needed to weave together archetypal and historical themes that embrace, among other things, the creation, the fall and the resurrection of humanity” (Fargnoli & Gillespie, 74). Joyce began writing Finnegans Wake in 1922, the same year Ulysses saw publication. Compared to that book, Finnegans Wake “took longer to write… was conceived and executed under a greater range of symbolic and mythic guidelines, was dictated to more famous amanuenses, among them Samuel Beckett, was used as a weapon of revenge by Joyce, who mocked in it the people who had offended him… in short, it was the inscription on the walls of eternity of James Joyce’s feelings, his prejudices and his obsessions” (Arnold, 55). “Joyce insisted that each word, each sentence had several meanings and that the ‘ideal lecteur’ should devote his lifetime to it, like the Koran” (Connolly, The Modern Movement, 81). Published simultaneously with the first trade edition and the signed limited first edition, British issue; the Viking Press “brought out and sold [this] limited edition of 310 copies [although the limitation page states only 300], the sheets of which were imported from the English publisher Faber & Faber. [The Viking] limited edition is identical with that of the British publisher and bears both imprints.” 

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

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