4023

James Joyce

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Autographs Start Price:NA Estimated At:20,000.00 - 25,000.00 USD
James Joyce

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Auction Date:2016 Feb 18 @ 18:00 (UTC-5 : EST/CDT)
Location:236 Commercial St., Suite 100, Boston, Massachusetts, 02109, United States
ALS - Autograph Letter Signed
ANS - Autograph Note Signed
AQS - Autograph Quotation Signed
AMQS - Autograph Musical Quotation Signed
DS - Document Signed
FDC - First Day Cover
Inscribed - “Personalized”
ISP - Inscribed Signed Photograph
LS - Letter Signed
SP - Signed Photograph
TLS - Typed Letter Signed
Two ALSs to Madame Yasushi Tanaka [Louise Gebhart Cann]: an ALS, one page, 4.5 x 6.25, November 24, 1920, in full: “I reply to your letter I shall call on you on Sunday afternoon next as it seems that that is the most convenient time for you”; and an ALS, one page, 7.5 x 9.75, November 29, 1920, in part: “As I promised I send you the notices but may I ask you to return them when read as I have no others. If you will drop a line to: Mr. Fritz Vanderpyl…saying that you are writing the article on me I am sure he will let you have the copy of Egoist (15 January 1913) which I lent him some time ago. It contains the whole story of Dubliners.” In overall fine condition.

While living in Paris Joyce was introduced to art critic Louise Gebhart Cann and her husband, painter Yasushi Tanaka. Ezra Pound had suggested that she might do an article about Joyce's work, and she had written him to arrange a meeting. Joyce responded with these letters, and Tanaka did ultimately publish an article about him in the Pacific Review. The piece Joyce references as having appeared in The Egoist (the true date of publication January 15, 1914), was a letter he wrote describing his fruitless efforts to publish Dubliners. Despite having a contract for publication, he was being forced to censor and alter various passages deemed offensive. It was finally published in June 1914 after nearly a decade of persistence. When Joyce wrote the present letters he was amidst a similarly frustrating episode regarding the publication of Ulysses. The Egoist had published sections of it in 1919 but struggled to find willing printers and had since folded. Meanwhile, The Little Review was publishing Ulysses in the United States when the editors were hit with an obscenity lawsuit and forced to cease serialization. A superb pair of scarce handwritten letters related to the famously controversial publishing history of his first major work.