First edition to be printed in Britain, one of 100 copies on handmade paper (this copy number 38) signed by the author. Quarto. Original vellum over boards, binding design by Eric Gill with large gilt bow on each cover, top edge gilt, others uncut. London, John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1936.
A really fine copy, all but perfect, with a little foxing to the fore-edge, but otherwise unthumbed, un-bowed, and unmarked, lacking the original slipcase.
This signed limited Bodley Head issue of Ulysses is certainly the most handsome edition of the text published in Joyce's lifetime. Its publication followed the legal success of the 1934 Random House Ulysses trial, which established the principle that a "classic" text was allowed greater leeway in the matter of morals. The "classic" argument was backed up by the luxuriousness and expense of the Bodley Head edition, for experience had proved over years that expensive books were much less likely to be attacked for obscenity, and it was published with no public scandal.
A touch of creasing to head and tail of spine, some variation to the tone of the vellum binding, faint marking to covers, very light spotting to edges of text block, endpapers and margins of preliminary and terminal leaves.
Slocum & Cahoon, A23.
