Underneath its modest dull red cover, well tucked away among collections of poetry and art books on the shelves in the Special Collections of the University of Otago Library, lies a much-celebrated, researched and censored novel by an Irish author once referred to as “the man with the bomb.” that would blow the remnants of Europe into the air”: James Joyce’s gigantic, modernist masterpiece Ulyssesturning 100 this year.
Ulysses documents a single day structured as an Odyssean quest, following Leopold Bloom, a Jewish-Irish advertising executive, as he wanders the city of Dublin.
Since it was first published in 1922 by Sylvia Beach’s Shakespeare and Company in Paris, much has been written about how important, difficult, obscene and grand Ulysses is.
It struggled to get published, and once it was, it was praised, panned, banned, smuggled, confiscated, and burned.
It now tops the list of great novels of all time, a work so significant that it inspired an annual celebration, “Bloomsday,” on June 16, the only day in 1904 when the novel takes place.
How much do we know about his journey to our shelves here in Otepoti? Well, we know that our copy of the 9th edition is Shakespeare and Company in 1927, and it came to us thanks to the quiet collecting frenzy and subsequent generosity of Charles Brasch; part of his personal library of 7500 books in Special Collections.
However, there’s a lot more we don’t know, like when Brasch bought it.
His diaries, his memoirs Cluesand Otago University Press’ fantastic landing archive doesn’t mention it. Brasch sometimes wrote the date of purchase in his books, but unfortunately there is no date in it Ulysses.
His copy of Joyce’s Pomes Peach, however, published in the same year, is dated “April 1928 London”. Has Brasch acquired? Ulysses around this time, while studying at Oxford University?
If he did, was that before or after it was declared “obscene” in Britain? Or perhaps he bought it from Shakespeare and Company himself when he visited Paris during this period.
The cover and binding raise even more questions: biographer Richard Ellman suggests that Joyce chose the specific blue of the first edition’s cover to match the Greek flag, and when it proved difficult to get the right color, Joyce asked painter Myron Nutting to blend that particular shade.
However, Brasch’s copy is bound in a simple, plain, dull red full cloth binding, with the original covers preserved. While this type of binding may not be unusual for the time, it’s hard not to wonder whether Brasch deliberately concealed the distinctive blue-and-white cover to avoid drawing attention to the text inside.
Ulysses In Aotearoa, it may never have been completely banned, but access was not restricted until 1950: only “members of the teaching profession and other bona fide students of literature” could buy it.
With his editorship of landing from 1947, Brasch would have had a legitimate reason to own a copy, but this does show how ‘dangerous’ this book was deemed.
In an intriguing parallel with Ulysses‘ detailed attention to the mundane experience, the last words in Brasch’s copy come from a handwritten note enclosed in the back cover addressed to “Douglas,” asking him to call the music department and make sure he continues to eat.
Brasch’s diaries indicate that this is probably the composer Douglas Lilburn, and the note probably dates from the late 1950s. Like Ulyssesit even ends with a yes!
Events on the occasion of the important literary jubilee of Ulysses will take place all over the world this year. The Dunedin Public Library recently hosted a series of informational panels visited by the Irish Embassy, and the same exhibition will be presented in Special Collections in July along with Brasch’s copy of Ulysses.
Alexander Ritchie is subject librarian, Special Collections, University of Otago Library.