The Scandal of Ulysses: The Life And Afterlife of a Twentieth Century Masterpiece

by Bruce Arnold

A recounting of the copyright problems surrounding James Joyce's novel Ulysses.

Genres: Ireland

346 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Bruce Arnold is an English journalist and author who has lived in Ireland since 1957. His main expertise is in the fields of literary criticism and art criticism.
In 1983 it emerged that his telephone had been bugged by Charles J. Haughey in the Irish phone tapping scandal. He and the other bugged journalists were considered to have "anti-national" views.

Reviews

[Steve]

Samuel R. Delany recommended this book to me on Facebook, as I was finishing Ulysses itself. This is the story of the text of Ulysses, after it was published, and through separate editions, and especially the unfortunately Gabler edition published in the late 80s. The story is told very well, and it is a scandal that a new edition was published with very little feedback from the literary world. A superb book, and if you are interested at all in the topic I highly recommend it.

[Brian]

A good, solid account of the controversy arising in the Joycean community over Hans Walter Gabler's 1986 edition of Ulysses: The Corrected Text. The book is a little dense in places (as Arnold humourously admits) and most readers will find the passions sparked by the controversy itself faintly ludicrous, but the former point is a minor irritation and the latter adds, in some ways, to the enjoyment.