This presentation copy of Dubliners signed by James Joyce is among the highlights of The Exceptional Literature Collection of Theodore B. Baum, to be sold in two parts at Christie’s in New York this month. It is estimated at $150,000-250,000. Inscribed copies of Dubliners are very rare and only three have been recorded at auction in the past 80 years. This one is the only example still in its original dust jacket. It is inscribed by Joyce to his publisher Crosby Gaige: “To Crosby Gaige James Joyce Paris 25.V.28.” This inscription dates to just five months after Gaige published Anna Livia Plurabelle, a section of Finnegans Wake, in a signed limited edition of 850 copies.
On November 28, 1905 Joyce mailed the manuscript of Dubliners to Grant Richards, who accepted it for publication in February 1906 and announced it the following month in The First Catalogue of Books Published by Grant Richards. In April, however, objections from the printer halted production. Joyce wrote an angry letter to Richards on 5 May: “You tell me in conclusion that I am endangering my future and your reputation. I have shown you earlier in the letter the frivolity of the printer’s objections and I do not see how the publication of Dubliners as it now stands in manuscript could possibly be considered an outrage on public morality…” (Herbert Gorman, James Joyce, pp.149). Although Joyce agreed to a few alterations, Richards soon abandoned his plans for Dubliners. Joyce offered the book to others, including Elkin Mathews and George Roberts at Maunsel. Maunsel printed an edition of 1,000 copies by July 1910 but this was destroyed by the printers because of objectionable passages. At the most, only a few sets of page proofs of this edition were retained by Joyce.
Joyce returned to Richards on 23 November 1914, committed to publishing the book as it was written, which by then had grown by two stories, “A Little Cloud” and “The Dead,” the masterpiece with which the collection concludes. Joyce guaranteed the sale of 130 copies in Trieste. Richards agreed, signed a contract on 4 March 1914 and published the book on 15 June. 1,250 sets of sheets were printed, of which approximately 746 were bound in this edition. The remaining 504 sets were sold by Huebsch in New York.
Mr. Baum’s library of literary first editions is among the finest ever assembled, built over the course of decades as he worked closely with top dealers and auction houses to locate the best copies of the most beloved books. The collection is particularly strong in works by English and American authors—from Edmund Spencer and John Milton in the 16th & 17th centuries through Jonathan Swift, Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, and Charles Dickens in the 18th & 19th centuries, all the way to Kurt Vonnegut, Toni Morrison and more in the 20th century.
The live online sale is on September 14. Part II of the online auction runs from September 2-17.
UPDATE: The Exceptional Literature Collection of Theodore B. Baum, sold across two live and online sales, totalled $9,657,875, surpassing the pre-sale high estimate.
