Joyce APCS and Beach ALS and other material.
ULYSSES PIRACY ARCHIVE
(Beach, Sylvia.) Joyce, James. Autograph postcard signed, “James Joyce,” to Miss [Kate] Buss, May
11, 1922, unprinted card, recto only.
Boxed together with:
Beach, Sylvia. Autograph letter signed, “Sylvia Beach,” to Miss [Kate] Buss, November 22, 1926, one leaf of Shakespeare and Company letterhead, recto only. With related enclosures.
Kate Buss, an American author and critic living in Paris, was a friend of Pound and other intimates of Joyce, and for some time she lived in the same house as the Joyces in the rue de l’Université. In this letter Joyce writes to her in May of 1922 (in full): “Herewith the page and photograph signed. 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. Sincerely yours...” Buss’s enthusiastic review of Ulysses – which she was able to read through the auspices of Pound who borrowed from Joyce “his unsewed copy” for her use, and which Joyce himself later inscribed to her – was published in The Boston Evening Transcript on October 7, 1922.
Four years later, Joyce and Beach were in the midst of crisis: Samuel Roth, an American renegade publisher, had launched his Two Worlds Monthly in July 1926 with unauthorized reprints of Ulysses; and he continued to issue it, with installments of Joyce’s work, month after month. That October, Beach here writes to Buss for assistance: “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, ...” In a postscript she adds, “McAlmon is over there. Have you seen him?”
The enclosures Beach mentions, present here, are as follows:
1. Typed letter carbon signed, Sylvia Beach, addressed “Dear Sir,” November 18, no year; two leaves, rectos only. Beach details the circumstances of Samuel Roth’s multiple crimes against copyright law and against Joyce in particular, including his versions of Ulysses (“which he is pirating and mutilating”), fragments of Finnegans Wake (“Mr. Joyce’s new work which had appeared in European reviews”), and alerts her reader to Roth’s potential forgery:
In No. 4 of Two Worlds quarterly, which, according to Mr. Roth, appears in a limited edition of 450 numbered copies after which the type is distributed, Mr. Roth announces that subscribers will receive their copy “signed by the leading contributor.” As Mr. Roth has admitted to Mr. Ernest Hemingway that his sales of this quarterly amount not to 450 but to eight thousand copies and one of those eight thousand copies may be in the possession of a reader of yours I shall be greatly obliged if that reader will let me know immediately by what “leading contributor” his or her copy of Two Worlds quarterly is signed.
2. Typescript carbon, “copy of cable sent to N.Y. Evening Post, Nov. 16”; one leaf, recto only. In full: “Reference your interview with Samuel Roth first November Two Worlds serial publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses is unauthorized unpaid for and the text has been altered.”
3. Typed transcription of New York Evening Post article; three leaves, rectos only. The headline reads, “Ulysses Serial Pirating Is Denied. Roth Insists Publication of James Joyce Work in Magazine was Properly Arranged. Is Silent on the Terms.”
In the spring of 1967, 167 prominent writers – friends of Beach, of Joyce, and of copyright law generally – signed a petition against the piracy: “An International Protest,” printed in transition (Paris. I (April1927)). Joyce’s lawyers did not secure an injunction against Roth and his Two Worlds Publishing until the end of 1928.
(#10902)
Print Inquire
