James Joyce's 'Ulysses' published - February 2, 1922

On this day in 1922, “Ulysses," a novel by Irish writer James Joyce, was first published in its entirety. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class. It's a production of I
Heart Radio. Hello Again. It's Eaves and you're listening to
This Day in History Class, a podcast that truly believes
no day is boring. Today's February second. The day was

(00:24):
February second. N Ulysses, a novel by Irish writer James Joyce,
was first published in its entirety. The book is regarded
as one of the most important works in modernist literature,
and it has a reputation for being long and difficult
to read. People in Ireland and Britain in other places

(00:46):
often pronounce it Ulysses, but I'm going to pronounce it
Ulysses throughout the rest of the episode because I have
an unrefined American accent. Throughout the early twentieth century, Joyce
wrote and published prose, poetry, and a play. Some of
his most notable pre Ulysses work includes Dubliners, a short
story collection about middle class life around Dublin, and a

(01:09):
portrait of the artist as a young man, Joyce's first novel.
By the time this novel was published, Joyce had already
began working on Ulysses. Poet Ezra Pound sent Margaret Anderson
and Jane Heap editors at the Greenwich Village based literary
magazine The Little Review parts of Ulysses. They agreed to

(01:30):
print the work serially and started doing so in nineteen eighteen,
but in nineteen twenty the editors were arrested for publishing obscenity,
largely due to Ulysses, but also because of the magazine's
tone in general. The two were convicted in nineteen one,
and they agreed to stop publishing Ulysses, but just a

(01:51):
couple of months after their conviction, Sylvia Beach, an American
who had an English language bookstore in Paris called Shakespeare
and Company, offered to publish the novel. Joyce set to
work on writing the rest of the book. He finished
writing in October of nine, though revisions continued throughout the
rest of the year. On February two, the first edition

(02:16):
of one thousand copies went on sale. The book was
paper bound with a blue cover with white lettering. Seven
hundred and fifty copies were normal issue. One d and
fifty numbered copies were printed on a larger format handmade paper,
and one hundred were signed by Choyce. Each of its
eighteen chapters are named after an episode of Homer's epic Odyssey.

(02:39):
Most of the novel follows Leopold Bloom, the main character,
around Dublin over the course of one day. Leopold is
written as a modern counterpart to Odysseus, while the other
two central characters, Stephen Dedalus and Molly Bloom, aligned with
the mythological Telemachus and Penelope. The book is known for

(03:00):
its use of the stream of consciousness technique, it's experimentation
with language inform, its literary illusions, is robust characterizations, and
its humor. The book was immediately successful. Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway,
and W. B. Yates were some of the books notable
early purchasers. Within eighteen weeks, the first edition had sold out.

(03:24):
Beach published another edition each year until ninety five. In
the US, the book was banned because it was considered pornographic,
but the band was lifted in nineteen thirty five in
Random House became the u S publisher of Ulysses. While
Joyce had made a little money from the serialization of Ulysses,
the publication of the book was much more lucrative. He

(03:47):
settled into a middle class lifestyle and began work on
the text that was eventually called Finnigan's Wake. Over the years,
Ulysses has been subject to plenty of analysis by its fans, critics,
and scholars of like. The value of Joyce's impact on
modern and post modern fiction has been debated, and Ulysses
has been considered too complex and inaccessible, but the book

(04:11):
is recognized as a pivotal text in literary history. I'm
Eve Jeff Coote, and hopefully you know a little more
about history today than you did yesterday. If you know
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(04:34):
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