Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
Joyce, James.. Finnegans Wake.. Faber & Faber; New York, 1939.
Price: US$251.91 + shipping
Condition: Good
Description: Ex-Library. Hardback/Hardcover - the dust cover has been laminated onto the hardcover. Well-read copy with some spine wear but still useable. Colouring of pages due to age. Published by Faber & Faber (London) in 1964. Quick dispatch from UK seller.
Seller: Stephen White Books, Bradford, United Kingdom
Joyce, James. Finnegans Wake. Viking Press, New York, 1939.
Price: US$450.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: 628pp.; HB blk.w/gilt; slight rub w/hinges cracked; PONstamp; clean,tight pgs. DJ pale bluegray w/blue,red&white; heavy rub&soil w/2x5"chip,spine; wear on edges&corners; tape repairs on spine&edges. Joyce classic. includes corrections pamphlet (Faber & Faber, 1945)
Seller: Xochi's Bookstore & Gallery, truth or consequences, NM, U.S.A.
Joyce, James. Finnegans Wake. Faber and Faber Limited, 1939.
Price: US$782.50 + shipping
Condition: Fair
Description: 628p. Inscribed by pen, binding slightly getting weak.
Seller: Yushodo Co., Ltd., Fuefuki-shi, Yamanashi Pref., Japan
JOYCE, James.. Finnegans Wake.. Faber and Faber, London., 1939.
Price: US$834.12 + shipping
Description: First edition. Royal octavo. pp [iv], 628. Issued simultaneously with the U.S. edition.Bookplate on front pastedown. Bottom corner of rear cover bumped. Covers just a little marked and scuffed. First blank and last page of text unevenly tanned. Very good indeed. No dustwrapper.
Seller: Peter Ellis, Bookseller, ABA, ILAB, London, United Kingdom
Joyce (James).. Finnegans Wake. Faber and Faber Limited,, 1939.
Price: US$1145.32 + shipping
Description: Fly-leaf and final page of text rather browned and just a little spotting to end-papers, otherwise a very nice copy. With the ownership inscription of Eric Walter White, the poet, editor, translator and composer
Seller: Bertram Rota Ltd, Kintbury, United Kingdom
Joyce James. FINNEGANS WAKE. London Faber and Faber 1939, 1939.
Price: US$1265.00 + shipping
Description: First Edition. 8vo, publishers original red cloth, decorated on the spine with gilt lettering and ruling, with excellent and skillful facsimile of the original dustjacket. 628 pp. A handsome copy of the book with interesting notes to the verso of one leaf, very little evidence of age or use, the last leaf a bit loose at the hinge. RARE AND IMPORTANT FIRST EDITION OF THIS CLASSIC WORK OF TWENTIETH CENTURY LITERATURE. "You were bred, fed, fostered and fattened from holy childhood up in this two easter island.and now, forsooth, a nogger among the blankards of this dastard century, you have become of twosome twiminds forenenst gods, hidden and discovered, nay, condemned fool, anarch, agoarch, hiresiarch, you have reared your disunited kingdom on the vacuum of your own most intensely doubtful soul." Finnegans Wake No book has ever been more ambitiously conceived than Joyces FINNEGAN'S WAKE. If ULYSSES represents the pinnacle of the Modernist movement, FINNEGAN'S WAKE is a step beyond; it stands in the same relation to ULYSSES as ULYSSES does to A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST.an extension which is also a completely new conception. Joyce envisioned the book as nothing less than a "history of the world." Seventeen years in the writing, and composed in a sort of meta-language--"an Esperanto for the art of fiction"--it stands as a unique monument to language and literature and the modern age. Slocum and Calhoun A49; Bradbury, The Modern World, 157-176. About this work, he stated "I might easily have written this story in the traditional manner. Every novelist knows the recipe.But I, after all, am trying to tell the story of this Chapelizod family in a new way. Time and the river and the mountain are the real heroes of my book. I am trying to build many planes of narrative with a single aesthetic purpose." (Ellmann) This copy offers the the look of the original book, but at a much better price since the original dustjacket is not present.
Seller: Buddenbrooks, Inc., Newburyport, MA, U.S.A.
Joyce, James. Finnegans Wake. Faber & Faber, London, 1939.
Price: US$1283.27 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: Hardback bound in original red publisher's cloth, spine a touch sunned, slight edge-wear, a touch scuffed on rear board; Pages lightly age-toned, rough-cut edges, top-edge sprayed red, flecked staining to top and fore-edges, prior bookshop label on front pastedown ['The Roycroft Book & Art Shop', which was a private lending library in Sydney], previous owner's dedication on half-title, sparse foxing throughout; Binding tight. This First Edition copy is one of 3,400 sets of sheets intended for the trade edition of Finnegans Wake, originally printed for Faber. Of this number, 950 were never bound and subsequently discarded by the publishers. This was potentially related to Joyce's objection at their 25 shilling price, which he believed to be too high. ; 5.75 x 8.75"; 656 pages
Seller: Walden Books, London, United Kingdom
JOYCE, James. Finnegans Wake. New York: The Viking Press, 1939.
Price: US$1750.00 + shipping
Description: First American Edition. Thick octavo. The final state of Joyce's long-gestating "Work in Progress," published in the same year as the signed Limited Edition co-published by Viking with Faber & Faber. Navy blue cloth boards with gilt lettering to front panel and spine and turqoise topstain; minor scuffing to textblock edges, else near fine. In unclipped typographic jacket, with some scuffing and light creasing at edges, with minor chipping to lower edge of front panel; thus close to near fine. A pleasing copy.
Seller: Harper's Books, ABAA, New York, NY, U.S.A.
Joyce, James. Finnegans Wake.. Faber and Faber, London, 1939.
Price: US$1983.72 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: 628 S. Orig.-Leinenband. Als "Finnegans Wake" 1939 erschien und das Rätselraten um den endgültigen Titel der seit 1927 als Fragmente eines "Work in Progress" erscheinenden Vorabdrucke zum Ende kam, hatte eine ratlose Öffentlichkeit zumeist andere Sorgen. Joyce' letztes Werk ist eine großartige Mixtur von Motiven und Sprachen: "Bis heute hat die Forschung weder über die dem Buch zugrunde liegende Fabel noch über weite Strecken des Textes völlige Klarheit erreicht" (Jörg Drews in Kindlers Neues Literaturlexikon). Mit Namenszug und die an die Vorsatzpapiere angrenzenden beiden Blätter wegen Leimdurchschlags etwas braunfleckig. Der Kopfschnitt mit Spritzwasserflecken, insgesamt handelt es sich jedoch um ein gutes, ordentliches Exemplar mit nur leichten Gebrauchsspuren.
Seller: Antiquariat Rolf Bulang, Dautphetal, Germany
JOYCE, James.. Finnegans Wake.. Faber and Faber, London, 1939.
Price: US$2250.00 + shipping
Description: 628 pp. Large 8vo, publisher's cloth in dust jacket. First edition. Very slight browning to front free endpaper and final page of text from jacket flaps; else a fine copy in a bright, sharp jacket with a short closed tear to the top of the front panel and very slight use to the top of the spine.
Seller: Jeffrey H. Marks, Rare Books, ABAA, Rochester, NY, U.S.A.
Joyce, James. FINNEGANS WAKE. Faber & Faber, London, 1939.
Price: US$2342.23 + shipping
Description: Pp. [iv]+628; med. 8vo; red cloth, spine lettered and ruled in gilt; top edges yellow, others uncut and partly unopened; price-clipped dust wrapper, edges rubbed and chipped, with large piece torn from top edge of front panel (causing loss to first 5 letters of first word of title), with a smaller piece torn from the back panel causing loss of one letter of title, remains of early tape repairs to wrapper edges on reverse, the backstrip slightly discoloured; book label of David Levine, Sydney, on upper pastedown, a couple of marginal damp stains, some foxing, mainly to outer leaves and edges; Faber & Faber, London, 1939. First trade edition. Slocum & Cahoon A47; Connolly, The Modern Movement, 87. *James Joyce's final work, 950 copies of which (still in sheet form) were destroyed by the publishers. 'When one of the very greatest of modern authors completes a work to which he has devoted sixteen years of labour - and which, hitherto described as Work in Progress, has been more talked about and written about during the period of its composition than any previous work of English literature - then the publishers feel that they should waste no words in describing the book which would be the most important event of any season in which it appeared' [wrapper blurb].
Seller: Kay Craddock - Antiquarian Bookseller, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
Joyce, James. Finnegans Wake. London; Faber, 1939.
Price: US$2566.53 + shipping
Description: First edition, first printing. Very good, slightly bumped to the bottom front corner and with occasional pencil annotations. Some spotting to preliminaries. Good dustjacket with minor tears protected by internal tape.
Seller: timkcbooks (Member of Booksellers Association), Penzance, United Kingdom
Joyce (James).. Finnegans Wake. Faber and Faber Limited,, 1939.
Price: US$2694.86 + shipping
Description: Small mark to spine, preliminaries and rear end-papers somewhat foxed, final leaf of text and one preliminary blank browned, otherwise a very nice copy in slightly frayed and chipped dust-wrapper which has a few short tears as often
Seller: Bertram Rota Ltd, Kintbury, United Kingdom
Joyce, James. FINNEGANS WAKE. FaBER, 1939.
Price: US$3000.00 + shipping
Condition: Near Fine
Description: FIRST ENGLISH EDITION, trade issue, one of 3,400 sets of sheets for the trade edition of Finnegans Wake which were printed for Faber and Faber. A FINE FIRST EDITION IN NEAR FINE DUST JACKET
Seller: Vagabond Books, A.B.A.A., PASADENA, CA, U.S.A.
James Joyce. Finnegan's Wake. Faber and Faber, 1939.
Price: US$3208.16 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: Review copy of the first edition of Joyces late masterpiece and one of the most confounding works of 20th century literature. Includes a perforated stamp on the last page of the text reading Complimentary copy - not for sale, having come originally from the library of Edwin Muir, who wrote one of the early reviews. Unfortunately there is no library stamp or other ownership signature. Published by Faber in 1939, there is one line of ink to the last page of text, some foxing to the front and end papers, and the dust jacket is lacking, but overall a very good copy of the first edition.
Seller: CASSIUS&Co., London, United Kingdom
Joyce, James. Finnegans Wake. Faber and Faber, London, 1939.
Price: US$3500.00 + shipping
Condition: Near Fine
Description: A Near Fine copy of the book in Very Good+ dust jacket. Contemporary owner's name and bookplate on the front endpapers, some foxing to the closed text-block and to the early and late leaves. Price-clipped dust jacket with the yellow titling faded, minor chips and tears, mostly a the extremities, and some smudges to the jacket panels. Among the most influential and complex Modernist works, Finnegans Wake "blends the reality of life with a dream world. The motive of the novel, inspired by the 18th century Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico, is that history is cyclical.the novel's plot is nearly as complex as the linguistic tactics deployed by Joyce, who combined a number of languages and utilized complex sonic implications to create an atmosphere of wordplay and hidden meaning throughout the entirety of Finnegans Wake" (Britannica). A natural progression from his earlier masterpiece Ulysses, Finnegans Wake shows Joyce pressing his ability to weave together numerous languages, cultural mythologies, and national literatures to defy boundaries and binaries we so often lean on to understand the world. Near Fine in Very Good + dust jacket.
Seller: Whitmore Rare Books, Inc. -- ABAA, ILAB, Pasadena, CA, U.S.A.
Joyce, James. Finnegans Wake. Faber & Faber, London, 1939.
Price: US$3749.99 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: First U. K. Printing. Original brick red cloth with gilt lettering at spine. First published in mcmxxxix on copyright page. Spine ends a bit softened, corners lean slightly inward. Previous owner stamp on title page. Offset or toning to 2nd front endpage and to page 628. Original jacket in mylar has price of 25s net and chips/creases to spine ends, chipped corner. Housed in a fine custom box. ; Large 8vo 9" - 10" tall
Seller: curtis paul books, inc., Northridge, CA, U.S.A.
JOYCE, James.. Finnegans Wake.. London Faber & Faber, 1939.
Price: US$3932.50 + shipping
Description: First edition, first impression, trade issue; large 8vo; publisher's burgundy cloth, titles to spine gilt, spotting to the first and last leaves from the endpapers, as always, dust jacket with some very minor loss at the top edge, otherwise a very good copy. 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). Slocum & Cahoon A47; Connolly (The Modern Movement), 87; Harry Levin (James Joyce: A Critical Interpretation).
Seller: Shapero Rare Books, London, United Kingdom
JOYCE James. Finnegans Wake. , 1939.
Price: US$5500.00 + shipping
Description: "JOYCE, James. Finnegans Wake. London: Faber and Faber, (1939). Large octavo, original red cloth, uncut and unopened, original dust jacket. $5500.First trade edition of Joyces "last and most innovative prose work."Finnegans Wake stands as "Joyce's last and most innovative prose work, written in a revolutionary narrative style that approximates the protean nocturnal dream world [that gave] Joyce the freedom he needed to weave together archetypal and historical themes that embrace, among other things, the creation, the fall and the resurrection of humanity" (Fargnoli & Gillespie, 74). Joyce began writing Finnegans Wake in 1922, the same year Ulysses saw publication. Compared to that book, Finnegans Wake "took longer to write was conceived and executed under a greater range of symbolic and mythic guidelines, was dictated to more famous amanuenses, among them Samuel Beckett, was used as a weapon of revenge by Joyce, who mocked in it the people who had offended him in short, it was the inscription on the walls of eternity of James Joyce's feelings, his prejudices and his obsessions" (Arnold, 55). "Joyce insisted that each word, each sentence had several meanings and that the 'ideal lecteur' should devote his lifetime to it, like the Koran" (Connolly, The Modern Movement, 81). Published simultaneously with the signed limited first edition (British and American issues), which consisted of only 425 copies. Slocum & Cahoon 47. Bookplate.Book fine, with slight offsetting to one front endpaper; bright price-clipped rare dust jacket near-fine with light rubbing to edges including a few small chips to top edge, very minor abrasion to front panel. A lovely copy."
Seller: Bauman Rare Books, Philadelphia, PA, U.S.A.
Joyce, James. Finnegans Wake. Faber & Faber, 1939.
Price: US$6737.14 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: 1939 Faber & Faber Hardback 1st edition 1st impression. Very good+ clean tight binding in very good+ original unclipped dustjacket. Pages are clean no writing, marks or bookplates, many pages still uncut, appears unread.
Seller: MacKellar Art & Books, Bournemouth, United Kingdom
Price: US$12500.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: Signed by James Joyce on dedication page, Copy number 380 of 425cc. 628pp, large octavo in salmon cloth boards, no slipcase, gilt title/author/date to spine, top page edges gilt, deckled edges; tight binding, slight edge wear, tiny faint spot at top front and rear boards, very light fading to spine, some pages remain uncut, bookplate of Florence M. Lankershim to FFEP, interior clean throughout, Very Good+ in mylar. First published in 1939, this was Joyce's final work. Signed, Limited Edition.
Seller: COLLINS BOOKS, Seattle, WA, U.S.A.
Joyce, James. FINNEGANS WAKE. Faber & Faber, 1939.
Price: US$13277.50 + shipping
Description: FINNEGANS WAKE, Faber & Faber, 1939, first edition, some faint grey specks along the spine, else a tight vg+ copy. Of 425 specially bound copies, this is 1/125 copies of the English issue SIGNED by the author. Among the most controversial and important 20th century works of literature.
Seller: THE FINE BOOKS COMPANY / A.B.A.A / 1979, ROCHESTER, MI, U.S.A.
Joyce, James. Finnegan's Wake. Faber, 1939.
Price: US$13500.00 + shipping
Condition: Fine
Description: First Edition, First Printing. A stunning sophisticated dustjacket that is vibrant in color with NO chips or tears. This original First State dustjacket is seldom seen in this nice condition. The book is bound in the ORIGINAL red cloth. The binding is tight, and the gold lettering on the spine is bright. The pages are clean with no writing, marks or bookplates in the book. Overall, a superb copy of this TRUE FIRST EDITION. We buy Joyce First Editions.
Seller: Magnum Opus Rare Books, Missoula, MT, U.S.A.
Joyce, James. Finnegans Wake.. Faber & Faber, London, 1939.
Price: US$14000.00 + shipping
Description: First signed limited edition, number 115 of only 425 large-paper copies signed by Joyce. Large octavo, original red cloth, titles to spine in gilt, top edge gilt, original publisher's yellow cloth slipcase. Signed by James Joyce on the limitation page. In near fine condition. Joyce began working on Finnegans Wake shortly after the 1922 publication of Ulysses. By 1924 installments of Joyce's new avant-garde work began to appear, in serialized form, in Parisian literary journals transatlantic review and transition, under the title "fragments from Work in Progress". The actual title of the work remained a secret until the book was published in its entirety, on 4 May 1939. The work has assumed a preeminent place in English literature. Anthony Burgess praised the book as "a great comic vision, one of the few books of the world that can make us laugh aloud on nearly every page." Harold Bloom called the book "Joyce's masterpiece", and wrote that "[if] aesthetic merit were ever again to center the canon [Finnegans Wake] would be as close as our chaos could come to the heights of Shakespeare and Dante." Modern Library named it one of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.
Seller: Raptis Rare Books, Palm Beach, FL, U.S.A.
Joyce, James. Finnegans Wake. Faber & Faber Ltd., London & New York:, 1939.
Price: US$14500.00 + shipping
Condition: Fine
Description: This is No 390 of the Large Paper, Limited Edition of 425 copies SIGNED BY JAMES JOYCE in green ink on the limitation page. An extremely fine and beautiful copy in the original yellow publisher's slipcase which shows very light soiling. "Purely in terms of literary technique, Finnegans Wake is probably the most astonishing and controversial book ever written. Completed in 1939 after seventeen years of labor, it was received with a mix of reactions ranging from bafflement to delight to open hostility. Many critics initially dismissed it as a waste of paper, a tangled web of nonsense and gibberish without plot, without content, without meaning. More than a few even questioned Joyces very sanity! And yet, today, whole careers have been dedicated to studying Finnegans Wake, and its many adherents past and present approach it with something close to awe." "If our society should go to smash tomorrow (which, as Joyce implies, it may) one could find all the pieces, together with the forces that broke them, in Finnegans Wake. The book is a kind of terminal moraine in which lie buried all the myths, programmes, slogans, hopes, prayers, tools, educational theories, and theological bric-a-brac of the past millennium. And here, too, we will find the love that reanimates this debris . . . Through notes that finally become tuneable to our ears, we hear James Joyce uttering his resilient, all-enjoying, all-animating Yes, the Yes of things to come, a Yes from beyond every zone of disillusionment, such as few have had the heart to utter." --Joseph Campbell Size: 8vo.
Seller: Quaker Hill Books, Redding, CT, U.S.A.
Joyce, James. Finnegans Wake. Faber & Faber Limited & The Viking Press, London & New York, 1939.
Price: US$15500.00 + shipping
Description: 628 pages. 26 x 17 cm. Limited edition, copy 22 of 425 signed by James Joyce in green ink. Joyce wished to puzzle critics with his novel's plot which is not nearly as complex as the linguistic tactics he employed, and he did both. Finnegans Wake met with mixed review: some said it was unreadable, others praised Joyce for ingenuity. Joyce combined use of a number of languages with complex ironic implications to create wordplay and hidden meaning throughout this work. His polyglot idiom of puns and portmanteau words was intended to convey the relationship between the conscious and the unconscious. The density and layers of meaning have induced scholars to dedicate a good portion of their lives studying it. The critic and scholar Richard Ellman was best known for his literary biography of Joyce noted, "In his earlier books Joyce forced modern literature to accept new styles, new subject matter, new kinds of plot and characterization. In his last book (Finnegans Wake) he forced it to accept a new area of being and a new language." Connolly: The Modern Movement 87. Slocum & Cahoon A49. Slight spine fading, some minor soiling to slipcase. Orig. publisher's orange/red buckram, backstrip lettered in gilt. Fine in the original yellow cloth slipcase as issued. Teg
Seller: Royoung Bookseller, Inc. ABAA, Ardsley, NY, U.S.A.
JOYCE, James. FINNEGANS WAKE. Faber & Faber/Viking Press, London/New York, 1939.
Price: US$15625.00 + shipping
Description: Original red buckram with gilt lettering on the spine. Copy #222 of 425 numbered copies printed on handmade paper and SIGNED by the author on the limitation page. One of the most important books of modern English fiction, if not one of the more readable. "Joyce insisted that each word, each sentence had several meanings and that the 'ideal lecteur' should devote his lifetime to it, like the Koran" (Connolly, THE MODERN MOVEMENT, 81); "The greatest failure in literature" (Burgess, 99 NOVELS: THE BEST IN ENGLISH SINCE 1939, page 25). Touch of wear to the heel of the spine which is mildly sunned. Lacking the original slipcase but with a custom-made slipcase in its place. Near Fine in a Fine custom slipcase
Seller: Charles Agvent, est. 1987, ABAA, ILAB, Fleetwood, PA, U.S.A.
Price: US$15886.30 + shipping
Description: London, Faber and Faber, und New York, 1939. Gr.-8°. 4 ungez. Bl., 628 Seiten. Roter Original-Buckramleinenband mit goldgeprägtem Rückentitel, Kopfgoldschnitt (Vorderdeckel gering fleckig, Ecken minimal bestoßen). Original red cloth. Slocum-Cahoon A 49. - Erste Ausgabe in limitierter Auflage dieses wunderbar verflixten und wortverspielten Textes. Nr. 408 von 425 num. Exemplaren, von Joyce im Druckvermerk handschriftlich signiert. - Vorderer Vorsatz mit kleinem Einriß im Bug. Zweiseitig unbeschnitten. First (limited) edition. Original Buckram wrappers. On two sides uncut. Our item No. 408 of 425 numbered copies on large handmade (mould) paper. Signed by Joyce in the colophone. A near fine copy (cover slightly brightened in some parts). Sprache: Englisch. *** Bitte kontaktieren Sie mich immer BEVOR Sie bestellen! Für ausführliche Beschreibungen und Bilder sowie günstigere Versandoptionen kontaktieren Sie mich bitte per Email! Please contact me always BEFORE you order! For detailled descriptions and photos as well as cheaper shipping options please send an email! ***
Seller: Antiquariat CoBrA, Oberrohrbach, Austria
JOYCE, James.. Finnegans Wake.. London: Faber & Faber; Viking Press, New York, 1939, 1939.
Price: US$16040.82 + shipping
Description: First edition, signed limited issue, number 366 of 425 copies signed by the author, printed on handmade paper, and specially bound; complete with the publisher's slipcase. The limitation was split between the British and American markets and sold simultaneously with the trade issues on 4 May 1939. "The most conspicuous innovation of Finnegans Wake is its use of 'dream-language'. After Ulysses Joyce believed that he had 'come to the end of English', and his last novel is a pervasive layering of multilingual puns in successive drafts which produces a fabric rich in semantic possibilities" (ODNB). Burgess, 99 Novels: The Best in English Since 1939, p. 25; Connolly, The Modern Movement 87; Slocum & Cahoon A49. Large octavo. Original red buckram, spine lettered and ruled in gilt, top edge gilt, other edges uncut, leaves unopened. Housed in publisher's yellow cloth slipcase. Later compliments slip from Patricia MacManus (1914-2005) of the Viking Press, marking the publication of Steinbeck's East of Eden on 19 September 1952, loosely inserted. Spine very gently sunned and bumped at foot, minor rubbing, internally clean; lightly soiled slipcase with wear to edges and two short splits: a near-fine copy.
Seller: Peter Harrington. ABA/ ILAB., London, United Kingdom
Price: US$19500.00 + shipping
Description: First Edition. James Joyce. FINNEGANS WAKE. Signed Limited Edition. London; Faber & Faber; New York, 1939. 4to., 260 x 171 mm [10 1/4 x 6 3/4"]. 4 p.l., [first blank], 628 pp. Original gilt titled brick red buckram, edges untrimmed. In the original [mildly soiled] yellow cloth slipcase which is in solid very good or better condition. Curiously with a possible original clear plastic dustwrapper not mentioned in the bibliography but for all intents and purposes, this wrapper has always been on the book. An extremely attractive example, spotless text block, neatly signed by Joyce on the limitation's page, number 216 of 425 copies only. - Slocum and Cahoon A49. Having exhausted all the possibilities of English in "Ulysses," he had only one recourse for his next project, which was to create an entirely new language as a pastiche of all the existing ones; the result is "Finnegans Wake." The language in "Finnegans Wake" is a continuum of puns, portmanteaus, disfigured words, anagrams, and rare scraps of straightforward prose. What Joyce does is exploit the way words look and sound in order to associate them with remote, unrelated ideas. For example, his phrase "Olives, beets, kimmells, dollies" may sound familiar to those who happen to know that the first four letters of the Hebrew alphabet are aleph, bet, gimel, daled. "Psing a psalm of psexpeans, apocryphul of rhyme" recalls a nursery rhyme that may reside quietly in your most dormant memory cells, while "Where it is nobler in the main to supper than the boys and errors of outrager's virtue" sounds like a drunk auditioning for the role of Hamlet. Imaginary adjectives that pertain to letters of the English alphabet are employed to describe Dublin as a city "with a deltic origin and a nuinous end." "Finnegans Wake" is the ultimate in esoterica, and what you get out of it depends largely on your store of knowledge, so that upon completion, with a mutual wink at Joyce, you congratulate yourself for being so clever. In 1994, in The Western Canon, Harold Bloom wrote of Finnegans Wake: "[if] aesthetic merit were ever again to center the canon [it] would be as close as our chaos could come to the heights of Shakespeare and Dante,"
Seller: TBCL The Book Collector's Library, Montreal, QC, Canada
JOYCE, James. Finnegans Wake. Faber & Faber, London, 1939.
Price: US$20000.00 + shipping
Description: Tall 8vo, original brick red cloth, top edge gilt, other edges uncut. London: Faber & Faber, 1939. Limited First Edition. Number 356 of only 425 numbered copies signed by Joyce. There is some residue from tape on the front & back fly-leaves, otherwise a nearly fine copy, in the original yellow cloth box which has very slight wear on the front edges.
Seller: Argosy Book Store, ABAA, ILAB, New York, NY, U.S.A.
Joyce James. FINNEGANS WAKE. London Faber and Faber 1939, 1939.
Price: US$20350.00 + shipping
Description: First Edition, First Issue, Signed by James Joyce and limited to 425 copies only, of which this is number 341. 8vo, publishers original red buckram lettered in gilt on spine, t.e.g., other edges untrimmed. Yellow cloth slipcase expertly re-created as the original. 628. A fine copy, very handsome, bright and clean, very well preserved and without wear. The slipcase in beautiful condition. IMPORTANT FIRST EDITION SIGNED BY JAMES JOYCE. A very desirable copy of this, the best and scarcest issue of the first editions. No book has ever been more ambitiously conceived than Joyces FINNEGANS WAKE. If ULYSSES represents the pinnacle of the Modernist movement, FINNEGANS WAKE is a step beyond; it stands in the same relation to ULYSSES as ULYSSES does to A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST.an extension which is also a completely new conception. Joyce envisioned the book as nothing less than a "history of the world." Seventeen years in the writing, and composed in a sort of meta-language--"an Esperanto for the art of fiction"--it stands as a unique monument to language and literature and the modern age.
Seller: Buddenbrooks, Inc., Newburyport, MA, U.S.A.
Joyce, James. Finnegans Wake. Faber & Faber; Viking Press, London New York, 1939.
Price: US$25000.00 + shipping
Condition: As New
Description: Limited Edition of of 425 copies printed. This copy is authentically SIGNED by James Joyce in green ink on the limitation leaf. A magnificent copy. The book is in excellent condition and appears UNREAD. The book is bound in the ORIGINAL publisher's cloth. The binding is tight with NO cocking or leaning and the boards are crisp. There is NO writing, marks or bookplates in the book. Overall, a stunning copy with the publisher's slipcase SIGNED by the author. We buy SIGNED Joyce First Editions.
Seller: Magnum Opus Rare Books, Missoula, MT, U.S.A.