The Little Review "Ulysses"

by James Joyce, Mark Gaipa, Sean Latham

James Joyce’s Ulysses first appeared in print in the pages of an American avant-garde magazine, The Little Review, between 1918 and 1920. The novel many consider to be the most important literary work of the twentieth century was, at the time, deemed obscene and scandalous, resulting in the eventual seizure of The Little Review and the placing of a legal ban on Joyce’s masterwork that would not be lifted in the United States until 1933. For the first time, The Little Review “Ulysses” brings together the serial installments of Ulysses to create a new edition of the novel, enabling teachers, students, scholars, and general readers to see how one of the previous century’s most daring and influential prose narratives evolved, and how it was initially introduced to an audience who recognized its radical potential to transform Western literature. This unique and essential publication also includes essays and illustrations designed to help readers understand the rich contexts in which Ulysses first appeared and trace the complex changes Joyce introduced after it was banned.

480 pages, Paperback

First published June 16, 2015

About the author

James Joyce was an Irish novelist, poet, and a pivotal figure in 20th-century modernist literature, renowned for his highly experimental approach to language and narrative structure, particularly his pioneering mastery and popularization of the stream-of-consciousness technique. Born into a middle-class Catholic family in the Rathgar suburb of Dublin in 1882, Joyce spent the majority of his adult life in self-imposed exile across continental Europe—living in Trieste, Zurich, and Paris—yet his entire, meticulous body of work remained obsessively and comprehensively focused on the minutiae of his native city, making Dublin both the meticulously detailed setting and a central, inescapable character in his literary universe. His work is consistently characterized by its technical complexity, rich literary allusion, intricate symbolism, and an unflinching examination of the spectrum of human consciousness. Joyce began his published career with Dubliners (1914), a collection of fifteen short stories offering a naturalistic, often stark, depiction of middle-class Irish life and the moral and spiritual paralysis he observed in its inhabitants, concluding each story with a moment of crucial, sudden self-understanding he termed an "epiphany." This collection was followed by the highly autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), a Bildungsroman that meticulously chronicled the intellectual and artistic awakening of its protagonist, Stephen Dedalus, who would become Joyce's recurring alter ego and intellectual stand-in throughout his major works.
His magnum opus, Ulysses (1922), is universally regarded as a landmark work of fiction that fundamentally revolutionized the novel form. It compressed the events of a single, ordinary day—June 16, 1904, a date now globally celebrated by literary enthusiasts as "Bloomsday"—into a sprawling, epic narrative that structurally and symbolically paralleled Homer's Odyssey, using a dazzling array of distinct styles and linguistic invention across its eighteen episodes to explore the lives of Leopold Bloom, his wife Molly Bloom, and Stephen Dedalus in hyper-minute detail. The novel's explicit content and innovative, challenging structure led to its initial banning for obscenity in the United States and the United Kingdom, turning Joyce into a cause célèbre for artistic freedom and the boundaries of literary expression. His final, most challenging work, Finnegans Wake (1939), pushed the boundaries of language and conventional narrative even further, employing a dense, dream-like prose filled with multilingual puns, invented portmanteau words, and layered allusions that continues to divide and challenge readers and scholars to this day. A dedicated polyglot who reportedly learned several languages, including Norwegian simply to read Ibsen in the original, Joyce approached the English language not as a fixed entity with rigid rules, but as a malleable medium capable of infinite reinvention and expression. His personal life was marked by an unwavering dedication to his literary craft, a complex, devoted relationship with his wife Nora Barnacle, and chronic, debilitating eye problems that necessitated numerous painful surgeries throughout his life, sometimes forcing him to write with crayons on large white paper. Despite these severe physical ailments and financial struggles, his singular literary vision remained sharp, focused, and profoundly revolutionary. Joyce passed away in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1941, shortly after undergoing one of his many eye operations. Today, he is widely regarded as perhaps the most significant and challenging writer of the 20th century. His immense, complex legacy is robustly maintained by global academic study and institutions such as the James Joyce Centre in Dublin, which ensures his complex, demanding, and utterly brilliant work endures, inviting new generations of readers to explore the very essence of what it means to be hum

Reviews

[Emelie Talledo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Shelving this as why-am-I-doing-this-to-myself

[Bob R Bogle · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's a big difference in the experiences of binging an old TV show and when we originally watched it unfold in real time back in the day. It's hard to conceive of what it must have been like to read Ulysses in serialized form during the period March 1918 until December 1920, when the serialization was terminated because of what was deemed obscene at the time. Readers of the Little Review didn't even get to read to the end of Ulysses; its first authorized edition (by Random House) would not be legally published in the United States until 1934, and a more accurate version would not appear before 1961.

This book here under review contains a transcription, with an attempt to preserve all the errata and editorial censorings, of the serialized version that appeared in the Little Review. This incomplete text is not a version appropriate for the first-time reader, but for persons very familiar with the text who are interested in this phase of its history. The text of Ulysses that appears here speaks for itself, and my focus is on accompanying essay material.

I took 22 pages of notes on the essay material: a good indication that there must be something of interest there . . .

We get quite a bit of information about the roles played during this period by important players such as Ezra Pound, Margaret Anderson, Jane Heap and, to a lesser degree, by John Quinn. Most, or all, of the historical background concerned with the writing of Ulysses can be found elsewhere; however, it is of course entirely pertinent for it to appear here. "The Composition History of Ulysses" section reminded me again (I'd never really forgotten it) how much I value and admire Michael Groden's masterful 1977 study, Ulysses in Progress, which is amply quoted here. If you're a student of Joyce, Groden's book is a must-own. On the other hand, if you haven't yet read Groden, then this section of the book will be like a revelation to you. "The Composition History of Ulysses" is like condensed Groden, dealing only with the part of the story through the Little Review experience. It was interesting to me to learn just how much Pound and Anderson did their best to censor Joyce prior to publication of various issues of the Little Review. Eventually material too central to the story would inevitably have to be retained, at which point continuing publication in pseudo-Puritanical America was doomed.

I'm more skeptical about the merits of the essay entitled "Joyce's Magazine Network," wherein an effort is made to compare (among other things) the content of each of Joyce's contributions with the other stories and poems and articles coincidentally appearing in each particular issue. It is suggested that a revolutionary evolution of Modernism is unfolding in that time on those pages, a hypothesis I embrace, but the method of demonstrating this seems somewhat preposterous; after all, the assembly of articles appearing in any one issue happened to come together by luck, not according to some master plan seeking out shared themes. On the other hand, if you're looking for material to support or disprove your hypothesis of a revolutionary evolution in literature, where better to look for signs than in a literary magazine? But maybe sometimes the focus is too close. If we zoom out and consider wider frames of time than on an issue-by-issue basis, it seems to me the case becomes more sustainable.

I would prefer to rate this book with fractional numbers of stars, but I'm prevented from doing that. If you're very interested in Joyce, you'll want to have a copy of this book on your shelf, although I'm not sure how often you'll feel the need to return to it.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

actual rating: 3.5 stars

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

A unique insight into the earliest incarnation of Ulysses. This edition is aimed towards scholars and students primarily, and offers composition and publication history of the text. We are also given a brief assessment of the features that the serialised novel was printed alongside, offering invaluable contextual information for Joyceans.

I'd strongly recommend this book for anyone with an interest in Joyce and Ulysses. The editors do a fantastic job with the organisation of the book, and wisely decline from offering annotations and other textual references.

I can't fault this book, but I would say that you can access the raw serialised chapters of Ulysses as printed in the Little Review on the Modernist Journals Project website, for free, should you need.

[Mills College Library]

Fiction J893u 2015