Loosely based on the Odyssey, this landmark of modern literature follows ordinary Dubliners in 1904. Capturing a single day in the life of Dubliner Leopold Bloom, his friends Buck Mulligan and Stephen Dedalus, his wife Molly, and a scintillating cast of supporting characters, Joyce pushes Celtic lyricism and vulgarity to splendid extremes. Captivating experimental techniques range from interior monologues to exuberant wordplay and earthy humor. A major achievement in 20th century literature.
Ulysses is one of the most influential novels of the twentieth century. It was not easy to find a publisher in America willing to take it on, and when Jane Jeap and Margaret Anderson started printing extracts from the book in their literary magazine The Little Review in 1918, they were arrested and charged with publishing obscenity. They were fined $100, and even The New York Times expressed satisfaction with their conviction.
Ulysses was not published in book form until 1922, when another American woman, Sylvia Beach, published it in Paris her Shakespeare & Company. Ulysses was not available legally in any English-speaking country until 1934, when Random House successfully defended Joyce against obscenity charges and published it in the Modern Library.
This revised edition follows the complete and unabridged text of Ulysses as corrected and reset in 1961. Like the first American edition of 1934, it also contains the original foreword by the author and the historic court ruling by Judge John M. Woolsey to remove the federal ban on Ulysses. It also contains page references to the 1934 edition, which are indicated in the margins.
Editorial Reviews
"Ulysses will immortalize its author with the same certainty that Gargantua immortalized Rabelais, and The Brothers Karamazov immortalized Dostoyevsky.... It comes nearer to being the perfect revelation of a personality than any book in existence." --The New York Times
"To my mind one of the most significant and beautiful books of our time." --Gilbert Seldes, in The Nation
"Talk about understanding 'feminine psychology'—I have never read anything to surpass it, and I doubt if I have ever read anything to equal it." --Arnold Bennett
"In the last pages of the book, Joyce soars to such rhapsodies of beauty as have probably never been equaled in English prose fiction." --Edmund Wilson, in The New Republic
About the Author
Irish novelist, poet, and short-story writer James Joyce (1882–1941) ranks among the giants of 20th-century literature. His experimental narrative techniques opened a new world of storytelling that continues to influence modern writers.
