The Landmark Battle over Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’

I have on the desk before me a copy of this rare first edition of Ulysses by James Joyce. It is perhaps the most influential novel of the 20th century and probably the book more people have claimed to have read but never finished.

Although parts of Ulysses had been serialized in The Little Review, a literary journal, the post-modernist masterpiece was first published in its entirety not in Joyce’s native Ireland, or even in England or America, but in Paris by Sylvia Beach at Shakespeare and Company 86 years ago today.

This is because some of Joyce’s earlier work had been cited for obscenity and there was a masturbation scene in a serialized chapter from Ulysses that aroused great condemnation.

At a trial in 1921, The Little Review was declared obscene and as a result Ulysses was banned in the United States. In a brave and principled move, Random House decided to test the ban and in 1933 the publisher arranged to import the French edition. U.S. Customs conveniently seized a copy when the ship was unloaded.

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