At a staggering 265,000 words, readers usually encounter Joyce’s work in a single door-stopping volume of challenging text made much more so by tiny, often illegible type.
This was not always the case—Ulysses started to make its first appearance as installments in a modernist literary magazine called The Little Review. Upon reading the opening lines of Ulysses, Editor of the Little Review Margaret Anderson declared, “We’ll print it if it’s the last effort of our lives.” Beginning in March 1918, copies were then serially distributed to readers as Joyce completed writing each episode.
Tragically, because of the close-minded attitudes of the day, Ulysses in installments was doomed from the start, and the publication plans were crushed by obscenity laws. Aggressive censorship scared off more than one book publisher, leaving the manuscript in the hands of Sylvia Beach, the American proprietor of the Paris bookshop, Shakespeare & Company. Beach launched the first edition of Ulysses in 1922 by subscription (interestingly, the same publication model that Thornwillow Press has used for the past three-and-a-half decades) in door-stopping, single-volume copies.
By presenting 3 ways to engage with the Ulysses—10 Volume Installment Sets, 4 Volume Patron Sets, and a tapestry of Virtual Readings—the Thornwillow Centennial Edition ensures that readers the world over, experienced Joyceans and first time readers alike, will be inspired by Joyce’s iconic words for years to come.
Visit our Kickstarter page to support this project and reserve your copy of the Thornwillow Centennial Edition of Ulysses!