Finnegans Wake by James Joyce | Special Limited Edition in Leather

Full leather binding in black calfskin with full cloth slipcase, gilt-blocked design to front panel and lettering to spine. Off-white, mould-made, deckle edged 130 gram paper (30% rag). Pulp-coloured endleaves, Nettuno light 140 grams. Rounded and backed. Signed and numbered 1-150, lettered A-Z. The companion booklet gathering of introductory matter by Seamus Deane, Hans Walter Gabler, David Greetham and the editors is printed on mould-made paper and hardbound with stiff grey paper over boards, 64pp.

This critically emended Finnegans Wake, praised by Seamus Deane as ‘astonishing and pleasing beyond measure’, is now delivered to its reading public more than seventy years after the novel’s first publication by Faber & Faber on 4 May 1939.

Finnegans Wake is the most bookish of all books. John Bishop has described it as ‘the single most intentionally crafted literary artefact that our culture has produced’. In its original format, however, the book has been beset by numerous imperfections occasioned by the confusion of its seventeen year composition. Only today, by restoring to our view the author’s intentions in a physical book designed, printed and bound to the highest standards of the printers’ art, can the editors reveal in true detail James Joyce’s fourth, and last, masterwork.

This edition is the summation of thirty years’ intense engagement by textual scholars Danis Rose and John O’Hanlon verifying, codifying, collating and clarifying the 20,000 pages of notes, drafts, typescripts and proofs comprising James Joyce’s ‘litters from aloft, like a waast wizzard all of whirlwords.’

‘This de-luxe edition of Finnegans Wake is an outstanding feat of publishing. … Joyce may have been a genius, but he drove his printers and publishers mad with corrections and rewriting of key passages (“Mr Joyce is an awful man for the changes,” a long-suffering printer is reported to have said). And Joyce complained bitterly that the first version of the book, published in 1939, contained many errors of fact and meaning, so his spirit will surely rest more easily now that finally, 70 years after his death in 1941, the great work has at last appeared in the form he wanted.’ Seamus Phelan, New South Wales Campus Review

‘The new Finnegans Wake is an object of great beauty. The 504-page book is set in Dante, a typeface designed for the book. It is printed on heavy, off-white paper; its size an impressive 285mm by 200mm. It is lovingly designed and made to measure up to its author’s posthumous expectations.’ Bruce Arnold

‘A book that is absolutely beautiful in its own right. Its look alone gives Finnegans Wake a new lease of life. The mise-en-page of the text is quite luxurious, printed in “Monotype Dante”, a typeface specially designed for the press in 1953/54 by Giovanni Mardersteig, which is extremely pleasing on the eye. It is easier to read, though no less beautiful than the Fournier typeface of the first edition from 1939. The way the pages are laid out also gives the work a new feel: more classic in outlook even than the first edition’ Wim Van Mierlo, Institute of English Studies, University of London

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
James Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet. He attended Clongowes, Belvedere, and UCD, before moving to Paris and spending most of his adult life abroad. He is best known, perhaps, for Ulysses, a novel set in Dublin and loosely based on the exploits of Odysseus.

ABOUT THE EDITORS
Danis Rose’s publications include The James Joyce Archive: Volumes 28-63 (New York, 1977-78; with David Hayman and John O’Hanlon); The Index Manuscript (Colchester, 1978); Understanding Finnegans Wake (New York, 1982, with John O’Hanlon); The Lost Notebook (Edinburgh, 1989; with John O’Hanlon); The Textual Diaries of James Joyce (Dublin, 1995); and Ulysses: A New Reader’s Edition (Mousehole, 2004).

John O’Hanlon has collaborated with Danis Rose in most of the Joyce-related projects undertaken by him, in particular in the preparation of the extensive electronic hypertext of Finnegans Wake. His expertise is in mathematics and logic, and he has been primarily responsible for the origin (or adaptation) and coherence of the programs and protocols essential to Rose’s hypertext constructions.