A COPY of Ulyssesby James Joyce could make €400,000 or more when it goes under the hammer in New York next month.
Sotheby’s auctioneers has announced the sale of a “superb” surviving copy of the rare first edition and said it was “one of the most important ever to come to auction”.
The vendor is an unnamed private English book collector who is also selling a copy, in its dust-jacket, of Joyce's collection of short stories Dubliners, which was originally sold for 3/6 (three shillings and sixpence) and is now estimated to be worth in the region of €140,000.
Sotheby's said the auction in its Manhattan saleroom on October 20th would feature "some of the greatest works of English and American literature from the 17th to the 20th centuries". As well as works by Joyce, a First Folioedition of Shakespeare's plays and a copy of The Great Gatsbyare also included.
The copy of Ulysseshad originally been owned by Sylvia Beach, the American woman who ran the Shakespeare Company bookshop in Paris which published Joyce's novel in 1922.
Beach kept a personal copy of the novel which was signed by Joyce.
Two decades later, when the Germans invaded Paris during the second World War, she was forced to close the bookshop after threatening visits by a Nazi officer.
Beach was interned by the Nazis in 1942 but released the following year after lobbying by her friend, the American expatriate Tudor Wilkinson, who had contacts inside the collaborationist French Vichy government.
She subsequently gave her copy of Ulyssesas a gift to Wilkinson and inscribed it to him as a "token of gratitude".
Sotheby’s auctioneer Peter Selley said the book would be auctioned with an estimate of $450,000-$550,000.
Mr Selley said the lot also included a single page of typescript with 100 handwritten annotations by Joyce of "revisions and additions" ahead of the final printing for chapter 10 (the Wandering Rocksepisode).
Separately, the copy of Dublinershas been assigned an estimate of $150,000-$200,000.
For rare-book collectors, Ulyssesis the most expensive and sought-after work published in the 20th century.
Ulysseswas first published in an edition of 1,000 copies in February 1922. Of these, the most valuable are 100 copies printed on Dutch hand-made paper and each signed by Joyce.
It is estimated that about 30 copies remain in private ownership; about 60 are held by public institutions such as the National Library of Ireland, while an estimated 10 copies are unaccounted for.
Mr Selley said “occasionally a copy turns up in a box”.
Depending on the condition and provenance, they could be worth “hundreds of thousands”.
The previous record for a copy of Ulyssesat auction was established nine years ago when a copy of "the 100", inscribed by Joyce to Swiss publisher Henry Kaeser, was sold by Christie's, New York, in 2002 to a private collector who paid $460,500.
