Apr 03, 2008 - Sale 2140

Sale 2140 - Lot 68

Price Realized: $ 15,600
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 5,000 - $ 7,000
JOYCE, JAMES and BEACH, SYLVIA. Autograph Note Signed by Joyce; Autograph and Typed Letters Signed by Beach along with copies of a cable by Beach to the New York Evening Post and a printed article from the Post. All Beach correspondence concerning the piracy of Ulysses and sent to a Miss Burr. Note by Joyce is 3 1/2x5 1/2 inches, on plain card Signed "Dear Miss Burr," dated 5 November 1922; all other items on single folded 8vo sheets. The Beach ALS is on Shakespeare and Company letterhead, fold marks with short clean tears at bottom and right edges. The Beach TLS is addressed "Dear Sir" and is a signed copy of a letter of clarification she sent to newspapers, with penciled leaf doodles along left margin. Paris, November 1926
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Additional Details

Miss Burr appears to have been a writer at the New York Evening Post who reported on the well-known piracy of Ulysses in Samuel Roth's magazine Two Worlds Monthly. The New York editor, bookseller and publisher of avant-garde literature first became associated with Joyce in 1925 when he published (also without Joyce's stated permission), five fragments from Joyce's current Work in Progress in his new magazine, Two Worlds. Beach mentions this in the 2-page TLS: "I wrote to him remonstrating and obtained two hundred dollars and a promise of more which never came." When his new magazine Two Worlds Monthly was launched the next year, Roth printed unauthorized and expurgated chapters from Ulysses that included several textual mistakes as well. Joyce and Beach initiated immediate legal action against Roth who lied about a printing arrangement with Joyce. It sparked a world-wide sensation in literary and intellectual circles, resulting in a printed protest against Roth signed by 167 prominent writers, artists, and thinkers, including T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats, Gertrude Stein, and Albert Einstein.
The note from Joyce states: "Herewith the page and photograph agreed. I shall be very interested to read your article but as I am leaving Paris, perhaps you can call on Miss Beach and arrange to send two copies of it there. Bon Voyage and good wishes, cordially yours James Joyce." Beach's letter, dated two weeks later on 22 November states: "Dear Miss Burr, Anything you can do to make this matter public and rescue Mr. Joyce from the clutches of Samuel Roth would be much appreciated. I enclose copies of the N. Y. Post interview, my cable, and letter to the papers. With kind regards, Yours affectionately, Sylvia Beach. [Robert] McAlmon is over there. Have you seen him?"