Ulysses 100
The Most Dangerous Book
Ulysses (1922) had the radical potential to transform Western literature.
The literary world is preparing for the 100th anniversary of James Joyce’s Ulysses. (February 2, 2022).
Ulysses started to make its first appearance as installments in a modernist literary magazine called The Little Review between 1918 and 1920.1
The novel many consider to be the most important literary work of the twentieth century was, at the time, deemed obscene and scandalous, resulting in the eventual seizure of The Little Review and the placing of a legal ban on Joyce’s masterwork that would not be lifted in the United States until 1933.
In The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce’s Ulysses Kevin Birmingham explores the story of the sufferings of James Joyce’s Ulysses under government censorship and obscenity laws, postal and customs laws, vice society raids, and courtroom heroics.2
Thornwillow Press is creating a fine press edition to celebrate the Centennial and has raised over $250,000.3 The Thornwillow Centennial Edition will present the monumental text beautifully and accessibly in formats designed to fulfill Joyce's original publication trajectory and celebrate his literary masterpiece. Thornwillow Press will create editions that are beautiful, engaging, and enduring. It has taken 100 years. 4
Over the course of 2022, Thornwillow Press will present three ways for collectors to engage with Joyce's masterpiece: Two which are available for purchase and one which will be free and accessible to all.
Back the Fine Press Limited Editions:
INSTALLMENT EDITIONS — The Installment Editions will realize Joyce's original publication plans by bringing out the novel in 10 volumes over the course of the Centennial year | Letterpress printed in sewn bindings with paper wrappers.5
PATRON EDITIONS — A series of Patron Editions will present the novel in beautifully bound 4 volume sets that celebrate and preserve Joyce's legacy | Letterpress printed bound in cloth, half-leather, and sumptuous full-leather bindings. 6
BLOOMSYEAR CENTENNIAL READING — This Virtual Yearlong reading presents the entire novel through a series of hundreds of video clips that unite readers—actors, singers, writers, collectors, and more—across the world in a tapestry of recordings that will be free and accessible to all. All tiers on this campaign support the virtual reading—wherever you decide to pledge, you will help bring the Bloomsyear Centennial Reading to life.
The Little Review “Ulysses” published by Yale University Press in 2015 brings together the serial installments of Ulysses to create a new edition of the novel, enabling teachers, students, scholars, and general readers to see how one of the previous century’s most daring and influential prose narratives evolved, and how it was initially introduced to an audience who recognized its radical potential to transform Western literature.
Birmingham, Kevin.(2015). The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce's Ulysses. 2015.
Thornwillow Press is creating a fine press edition to celebrate the Centennial of James Joyce's literary masterpiece Ulysses. James Joyce's ULYSSES: The Centennial Edition. Kickstarter campaign.
James Joyce's ULYSSES: The Centennial Edition. Subscribe.
James Joyce's ULYSSES: The Centennial Edition. Subscribe.
James Joyce's ULYSSES: The Centennial Edition. Subscribe.
"I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together"
Summary
All the action of Ulysses takes place in and immediately around Dublin on a single day (June 16, 1904). The three central characters—Stephen Dedalus (the hero of Joyce’s earlier Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man); Leopold Bloom, a Jewish advertising canvasser; and his wife, Molly—are intended to be modern counterparts of Telemachus, Ulysses (Odysseus), and Penelope, respectively, and the events of the novel loosely parallel the major events in Odysseus’s journey home after the Trojan War.
The book begins at 8:00 in the morning in a Martello tower (a Napoleonic-era defensive structure), where Stephen lives with medical student Buck Mulligan and his English friend Haines. They prepare for the day and head out. After teaching at a boys’ school, Stephen receives his pay from the ignorant and anti-Semitic headmaster, Mr. Deasy, and takes a letter from Deasy that he wants to have published in two newspapers. Afterward Stephen wanders along a beach, lost in thought.
Also that morning, Bloom brings breakfast and the mail to Molly, who remains in bed; her concert tour manager, Blazes Boylan, is to see her at 4:00 that afternoon. Bloom goes to the post office to pick up a letter from a woman with whom he has an illicit correspondence and then to the pharmacist to order lotion for Molly. At 11:00 AM Bloom attends the funeral of Paddy Dignam with Simon Dedalus, Martin Cunningham, and Jack Power.
Bloom goes to a newspaper office to negotiate the placement of an advertisement, which the foreman agrees to as long as it is to run for three months. Bloom leaves to talk with the merchant placing the ad. Stephen arrives with Deasy’s letter, and the editor agrees to publish it. When Bloom returns with an agreement to place the ad for two months, the editor rejects it. Bloom walks through Dublin for a while, stopping to chat with Mrs. Breen, who mentions that Mina Purefoy is in labour. He later has a cheese sandwich and a glass of wine at a pub. On his way to the National Library afterward, he spots Boylan and ducks into the National Museum.
In the National Library, Stephen discusses his theories about Shakespeare and Hamlet with the poet AE, the essayist and librarian John Eglinton, and the librarians Richard Best and Thomas Lyster. Bloom arrives, looking for a copy of an advertisement he had placed, and Buck shows up. Stephen and Buck leave to go to a pub as Bloom also departs.
Simon and Matt Lenehan meet in the bar of the Ormond Hotel, and later Boylan arrives. Leopold had earlier seen Boylan’s car and followed it to the hotel, where he then dines with Richie Goulding. Boylan leaves with Lenehan, on his way to his assignation with Molly. Later, Bloom goes to Barney Kiernan’s boisterous pub, where he is to meet Cunningham in order to help with the Dignam family’s finances. Bloom finds himself being cruelly mocked, largely for his Jewishness. He defends himself, and Cunningham rushes him out of the bar.
After the visit to the Dignam family, Bloom, after a brief dalliance at the beach, goes to the National Maternity Hospital to check in on Mina. He finds Stephen and several of his friends, all somewhat drunk. He joins them, accompanying them when they repair to Burke’s pub. After the bar closes, Stephen and a friend head to Bella Cohen’s brothel. Bloom later finds him there. Stephen, very drunk by now, breaks a chandelier, and, while Bella threatens to call the police, he rushes out and gets into an altercation with a British soldier, who knocks him to the ground. Bloom takes Stephen to a cabman’s shelter for food and talk, and then, long after midnight, the two head for Bloom’s home. There Bloom makes hot cocoa, and they talk. When Bloom suggests that Stephen stay the night, Stephen declines, and Bloom sees him out. Bloom then goes to bed with Molly; he describes his day to her and requests breakfast in bed.
Legacy
While the allusions to the ancient work that provides the scaffolding for Ulysses are occasionally illuminating, at other times they seem designed ironically to offset the often petty and sordid concerns that take up much of Stephen’s and Bloom’s time and continually distract them from their ambitions and aims. The book also conjures up a densely realized Dublin, full of details, many of which are—presumably deliberately—either wrong or at least questionable. But all this merely forms a backdrop to an exploration of the inner workings of the mind, which refuses to acquiesce in the neatness and certainties of classical philosophy
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ulysses-novel-by-Joyce
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