James Joyce
Ulysses: The Corrected Text.
Random House, 1986. First printing of first US edition. Preface by Richard Ellmann. Afterward by Hans Walter Gabler. Edited by Hans Walter Gabler, with Wolfhard Steppe and Claus Melchior. 039455373X xiii/649 pages.
Volume, measuring approximately 6.5" x 9.75", is in fine condition, with solid binding, clean and bright interior. Dust jacket exhibits two very small scuff marks to front cover and minor edgewear at top edge. Jacket is preserved in mylar cover.
"James Joyce's "Ulysses" is one of the seminal books of the twentieth century. Because of the enormously complicated nature of the text and the fact that it was originally set on a small press in France, it has from its first edition been subject to corrections and revisions. The first legally printed edition in any English-speaking country was published by Random House in 1934 -- and, incidentally, made American literary history when it was successfully defended against the charge of obscenity. A substantially revised text was published in 1961 and became the generally accepted one until the appearance of the present edition.
This text, the result of seven years' work by an international team headed by Professor Hans Walter Gabler, is based on the study and comparison of manuscript pages, early proofs and the author's corrections. When it first appeared in a three-volume extensively annotated edition in 1984, it was hailed by Joyce scholars and by the press as a monumental achievement. "It fixes 5,000 errors... involving punctuation, omitted words, phrases and even entire sentences" wrote the New York Times in a front-page story, "an average of seven flaws for every printed page of "Ulysses.""