Finnegans Wake.

Joyce's last and most innovative prose work. One of 3,400 sets of sheets for the trade edition of Finnegans Wake which were printed for Faber. Of these, 2,255 were bound and sold at 25 shillings, 950 were destroyed by the publisher, and the remaining were gratis copies. It is possible that the 950 discarded sets of sheets remained unsold because of the price, which Joyce believed was too high.

'A way alone aloved alost along the…' If Finnegans Wake is a key book, it is a key which needs a key' (Connolly). 'His work is enriched by such large resources of invention and allusion that its total effect is infinite variety' (Harry Levin).

First edition, first impression, trade issue; large 8vo; toning to the first and last leaves from the endpapers (as always); publisher's burgundy cloth, titles to spine gilt, with the unclipped dust-jacket, dust-jacket with some slight loss at head of spine, slight rubbing to extremities, spine a little toned, else very good; housed in green morocco gilt solander box.

Slocum & Cahoon A47; Connolly, The Modern Movement, 87; Harry Levin, James Joyce: A Critical Interpretation.