Stephen Hero. Part of the First Draft of ‘A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man’. Edited with an Introduction by Theodore Spencer. London: Jonathan Cape, 1944. First U.K. Edition. Fading to cloth boards & light wear to dust jacket.

Joyce’s posthumously published short novel, which was written when the author was in his early twenties, and being an early version of what became ‘Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.’

The publication of Stephen Hero in 1944 was a major literary event. The 383 manuscript pages from the Harvard College Library, which form the core of this text, were rescued from Joyce’s fireplace after he (legend has it) threw the manuscript in the fire following its rejection by over twenty publishers. Spencer’s edition provided the first public access to this material, accompanied by his scholarly introduction that helped contextualize its significance