James Joyce's Ulysses

James Joyce (1882-1941) has been called the greatest 20th-century novelist writing in English. Ulysses is his masterpiece. The manuscript of Ulysses is among the premier treasures of the Rosenbach. Dr. Rosenbach owned a first edition of the novel – the banned book had been smuggled into the country for him in 1922. He purchased the manuscript at the auction of lawyer John Quinn’s collection in 1924. (Quinn had defended Joyce and his publishers against obscenity charges under the Comstock laws in 1920.) Selections from the manuscript are always on display. View a complete guide to the works by and about James Joyce in the Rosenbach collection here.

The Rosenbach celebrates the Joycean tradition annually on Bloomsday, June 16. Bloomsday, the only international holiday in recognition of a work of art, brings scholars, devotees, and the general public together on Delancey Place for a day of dramatic readings from the novel. The Rosenbach also produces a special exhibition related to Joyce and Ulysses, drawing from its substantial collection of modern literary materials.

James Joyce on nationalism, from Episode 12

p. 44 in the manuscript or p. 272 in the Gabler edition

from the Project Gutenberg edition online:

—What is it? says John Wyse.

—A nation? says Bloom. A nation is the same people living in the same place.

—By God, then, says Ned, laughing, if that’s so I’m a nation for I’m living in the same place for the past five years.

So of course everyone had the laugh at Bloom and says he, trying to muck out of it:

—Or also living in different places.

—That covers my case, says Joe.

—What is your nation if I may ask? says the citizen.

—Ireland, says Bloom. I was born here. Ireland.

Collection Highlights

Photograph of 7 Eccles Street

In the fourth chapter of Joyce’s Ulysses, the reader meets Leopold Bloom, a middle-aged advertising salesman who is Joyce’s modern equivalent of Odysseus. In these pages, Bloom makes tea and toast for his wife, Molly, then leaves the house to get a kidney for his own breakfast. In 1950, a…
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Two Worlds Monthly

The American publisher Samuel Roth serialized Ulysses in his new magazine Two Worlds Monthly, but without permission from Joyce. This acquisition completes the Rosenbach's set of the Two Worlds Monthly's pirated publication of Ulysses. American readers were exposed to the first chapters of Ulysses in the New York magazine The…
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Ulysses: autograph manuscript, “Circe” episode

Joyce began work on "Circe" when he got to Paris in July of 1920. His work was slowed by a missing trunk of books and notes  that Stanislaus had sent from Trieste. By the time he finished this draft in December, he claimed to have written in out at least…
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Woolsey Decision in U.S. vs. One Book Called Ulysses

In 1921, Ulysses was banned in the U.S. due to objections to masturbation in the Nausicaa episode. The issue was revisited in 1933 in the case United States vs. One Book Called Ulysses. In contrast to the earlier ruling, Judge Woolsey decided that obscenity was not to be defined by…
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Everything you need to know about Bloomsday

What is Bloomsday? June 16 is the day the world celebrates James Joyce and his literary masterpiece, Ulysses. The celebration is called “Bloomsday” after one of the main characters, Leopold Bloom. As the residence of the complete manuscript of Ulysses, the Rosenbach has celebrated Bloomsday for more than 20 years. The main event features readings from Ulysses, …

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The Many Bans of Ulysses

Joyceans and longtime Rosenbach friends are well-acquainted with the history of how James Joyce’s Ulysses ran afoul of the Comstock Law, which prohibited use of the postal service to mail “obscene” literature among other things. The magazine The Little Review, which published the first chapters of Ulysses serially up until the “Nausicaa” episode in 1921, was brought …

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