James Joyce First Editions

• Chamber Music — 1907 · Elkin MathewsPublished by Elkin Mathews, London, May 1907, in an edition of 509 copies (Slocum & Cahoon A3) — Joyce's first book. Bound in green cloth, lettered in gilt on the upper cover and spine, the title within a pictorial border. Mathews did not bind the whole edition at once, so distinct states exist within the single printing. First state: thick laid endpapers of the larger size, the text of the poem in signature C…. Elkin Mathews, London, 1907 is the true and only first edition; there is no competing UK/US issue in 1907, and the census claim is confirmed. On the American side there is a documented trap the census misses: the first American appearance is the unauthorized Cornhill Company edition (Boston, June 1918, green cloth boards with the title gilt-stamped on the upper cover, roughly 1,000 copies), which precedes B. W.…. No book-club issue is documented. The standing traps are the two 1918 American editions — the unauthorized Cornhill (Boston) and the authorized Huebsch (New York) — both routinely catalogued as 'first edition' when they are at most 'first American' or 'first thus'. Confirm the 1907 Elkin Mathews title page first, then test the state points (thick laid endpapers, signature C centring, lighter cloth) before….
• Dubliners — 1914 · Grant RichardsLondon Grant Richards 1914, red cloth. The genuine first has the publisher's device and is distinguished from the 1916 US Huebsch edition. Notoriously delayed (set in type 1906) but not published until 1914 after years of printer's objections. Grant Richards London 1914 is the true first, preceding B.W. Huebsch New York 1916 (the first US, printed from English sheets/plates). UK precedes US. Modern Library and later reprints are clearly marked; any edition dated after 1914 or bearing a US imprint is not the first.
• A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man — 1916 · B.W. HuebschTrue first is the New York B.W. Huebsch edition, issued 29 December 1916, dated 1916 on the title page. Bound in publisher's blue cloth with gilt spine lettering. The entire first printing was manufactured in the United States by Huebsch. Unusually, the US (Huebsch, 1916) precedes the UK. Harriet Shaw Weaver's Egoist Press issue of 22 January 1917 was made up from imported American Huebsch sheets with a cancel title page and English binding, so it is a British issue of the same first printing rather than a separate typesetting. The true first is therefore American. The Egoist Press then set and printed a genuine second edition entirely in England in 1917; that and all later printings are distinguished by imprint and date, and modern reprints carry number lines absent from the 1916 Huebsch first.
• Exiles — 1918 · Grant RichardsFirst edition, 1918, published simultaneously on the same day, 25 May 1918, in London by Grant Richards (Slocum & Cahoon 14) and in New York by B. W. Huebsch (Slocum & Cahoon 15). The Grant Richards issue is in quarter sea-green cloth over dark (blue-)green boards with printed paper labels to spine and upper board; scarce first-issue jackets carry the “shelf with Ibsen and Hauptmann” blurb. CORRECTION to census:…. Simultaneous UK/US first publication on 25 May 1918: Grant Richards (London, S&C 14) and B. W. Huebsch (New York, S&C 15). Both are collected as the true first; Grant Richards is conventionally cited first only by bibliographic sequence, and Bonhams/auction descriptions explicitly call the Huebsch issue “published simultaneously with the English edition.” The census “Grant Richards precedes Huebsch by days” is…. Later issues — Jonathan Cape reprints and the 1951 Viking edition that adds Joyce's own notes for the play — are first-thus reprints, not the 1918 first.
• Ulysses — 1922 · Shakespeare and CompanyEdition limited to 1,000 copies on three papers: nos. 1-100 on Dutch handmade paper SIGNED by Joyce; nos. 101-250 on vergé d'Arches; nos. 251-1,000 on handmade paper. Blue printed wrappers with white lettering ('Ulysses by James Joyce'), printed by Maurice Darantiere at Dijon. The first printing contains the printer's errata leaf and the famous textual errors of the Darantiere setting. The Paris Shakespeare and Company edition of 2 February 1922 is the true first; nos. 1-100 (Dutch handmade paper, signed by Joyce) are the apex. The Egoist Press (London) issue of October 1922 was the SECOND printing — 2,000 copies numbered from 1001, run off from the same Darantiere setting, of which some 500 were seized by US authorities; the January 1923 Egoist third printing (500 copies) was largely burned by…. Odyssey Press (1932, the first corrected continental text) and Random House (1934, first authorized US edition) are later editions; any copy not in the Darantiere blue Paris wrappers with the stated three-paper limitation is not the 1922 Shakespeare and Company first.
• Pomes Penyeach — 1927 · Shakespeare and CompanyFirst edition published by Shakespeare and Company, Paris, 5 July 1927 (Slocum & Cahoon 24). Issued in pale green (“seaweed”-green) papered boards lettered in dark green, with a printed errata slip tipped in on the blank page facing the colophon. Contains the thirteen-poem sequence (the opening “Tilly” being the added baker's-dozen poem), the price echoed in the title (the printed price / twelve francs); a…. Paris (Shakespeare and Company) is the true and only trade first — there was no contemporaneous UK or US trade edition, so place-of-first-publication precedence is unambiguous. The ordinary green-boards issue is the collected first. The 1932 Obelisk Press (Paris) edition, with illuminated initials (lettrines) by Lucia Joyce, is a celebrated later first-thus — NOT the 1927 first. Appearances of the poems in later Collected Poems volumes are reprints.
• Finnegans Wake — 1939 · Faber & FaberPublished simultaneously in London and New York on 4 May 1939 (Slocum & Cahoon A47). Faber trade issue: 3,400 sets of sheets printed, of which 2,255 were bound and sold, 950 were destroyed by the publisher and the remainder given away; gilt-stamped red cloth, untrimmed/partially unopened, in the red-and-yellow dust jacket — unclipped copies retain the price at the flap. Viking trade issue: 6,000 copies, black…. Faber (London) and Viking (New York) are simultaneous co-firsts, both published 4 May 1939 by design; neither is a second edition, and both are collected. The census claim that 'the London trade issue takes precedence with collectors' states a preference as a fact and is softened here. What is documented is that the Viking edition was photographically offset from proofs Faber supplied, so the Faber setting is the…. The 16-page pamphlet 'Corrections of Misprints in Finnegans Wake... As Prepared by the Author after Publication of the First Edition' (Faber, 1945) is a separate later publication, not a first-edition point; copies offered with it loosely inserted are still 1939 firsts, but the pamphlet's presence neither makes nor confirms one. Later Faber and Viking printings incorporate those corrections into the text and are….

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