A first edition copy of Ulysses, inscribed "To Lewis Galantière" by James Joyce, estimated at £60,000-£80,000 (€82,000-€110,000) failed to sell at Bonhams auctioneers in London on Wednesday in a sale of books consigned from the library of an unnamed "deceased Irish collector" who lived in the United States.
However, a copy of the first English printing of Ulysses, published in 1936 and signed by Joyce, did sell for £12,500 (estimate £10,000- £15,000).
A copy of a 1935 edition of Ulysses with illustrations by Henri Matisse, "one of 250 copies signed by both author and artist", sold for £6,250 (£6,000-£8,000).
A first edition copy – with the "very rare" dust-jacket – of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Joyce's semi-autobiographical first novel, sold for £40,000 (£20,000-£30,000). The book was published in 1916 in New York by BW Huebsch.
A first edition copy of Poems by WB Yeats, which was published by T Fisher Unwin in 1895, sold for £9,000 (£1,000-£2,000) .
A first edition copy of Oscar Wilde's play The Importance of Being Earnest from the same collection made £17,500 (£8,000- £12,000).
