Ulysses. Paris: Shakespeare & Co., 1928. Second Edition, Second Printing. Pp xvi, 735. Bound in cream cloth boards with surrealist design pattern to covers by John D. Gray’s (Cambridge), original blue front wrapper bound-in at rear. Light wear to covers, otherwise a nice bright copy of this fragile printing.

Between 1922 and 1925 the text of Ulysses was reprinted six times.  In May 1926 Shakespeare & Company issued a second edition in which the type was entirely reset and Joyce’s corrections from the previous printings were absorbed. This copy is the tenth printing overall but is also the second issue of the second edition.

Joyce asked that the wrappers of Ulysses be printed in the Greek colours (white on a blue field), as he considered the colours lucky for him, and they also ‘suggested the myth of Greece and of Homer, the white island rising from the sea’ (Ellman, p.524). The precise shade caused the binders problems, and a sample was eventually mixed for their use by Joyce’s friend, the artist Myron Nutting.

The tenth & penultimate printing of Ulysses published by Sylvia Beach at Shakespeare & Co. between February 2nd, 1922 and May 1930.