Ulysses

James Joyce’s most celebrated novel, and one of the most highly regarded novels in the English language, records the events of one day—Thursday the 16th of June, 1904—in the city of Dublin. While containing a richly detailed story and still being generally described as a novel, Ulysses breaks many of the bounds otherwise associated with the form. It consists of eighteen chapters, or “episodes,” each somehow echoing a scene in Homer’s Odyssey . Each episode takes place in a different setting, and each is written in a different, and often unusual, style. The book’s chief innovation is commonly cited to be its expansion of the “free indirect discourse” or “interior monologue” technique that Joyce used in his previous two books. Ulysses is known not only for its formal novelty and linguistic inventiveness, but for its storied publication history. The first fourteen episodes of the book were serialized between 1918 and 1920 in The Little Review , while several episodes were published in 1919 in The Egoist . In 1921, the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice won a trial regarding obscenity in the thirteenth episode, “Nausicaa.” The Little Review ’s editors were enjoined against publishing any further installments; Ulysses would not appear again in America until 1934. The first printing of the first edition was filled with printing errors. A corrected second edition was published in 1924. Stuart Gilbert’s 1932 edition benefited from correspondence with Joyce, and claimed in its front matter to be “the definitive standard edition,” but was later found to have introduced errors of its own. The novel’s initial reception was mixed. W. B. Yeats called it “mad,” but would later agree with the positive assessments of T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, stating that it was “indubitably a work of genius.” Joyce’s second biographer Richard Ellmann reports that one doctor claimed to have seen writing of equal merit by his insane patients, and Virginia Woolf derided it as “underbred.” Joyce’s aunt, Josephine Murray, rejected it as “unfit to read” on account of its purported obscenity, to which Joyce famously retorted that if that were so, then life was not fit to live. This Standard Ebooks edition is based on a transcription of the 1922 Shakespeare and Company first edition, with emendations from pre-1929 errata lists and the second edition in its 1927 ninth printing by Shakespeare and Company. It does not track any one particular edition, but rather is a blend of pre-1929 editions that aims to contain what scholars might consider to be the most accurate version of what was printed before 1929. Therefore, various probable misprints have been retained that were corrected in post-1929 editions. azw3 — Kindle devices and apps. Also download the Kindle cover thumbnail to see the cover in your Kindle’s library. Despite what you’ve been told, Kindle does not natively support epub. You may also be interested in our Kindle FAQ . kepub — Kobo devices and apps. You may also be interested in our Kobo FAQ . Advanced epub — An advanced format that uses the latest technology not yet fully supported by most ereaders. If you’re comfortable with technology and want to contribute directly, check out this ebook’s GitHub repository and our contributors section . You can also donate to Standard Ebooks to help fund continuing improvement of this and other ebooks.