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156
38.
June 30th, 1914.
Dear Mr. Joyce,
I don't know whether you are seeing the reviews of your book. The critics, according to their kind, lay stress on what they consider its dismal atmosphere, but they have, almost without exception, spoken very well of the book, and one or two have spoken of it even as well as I think it deserves. Those of my friends, too, whose opinion I value and on whom I have urged the reading of the book, have written to me enthusiastically. I hope you are satisfied; and, incidentally, I hope you are satisfied with the appearance of the book.
Now, what are you going to do next? Perhaps indeed in the long period that has passed between the writing of "Dubliners" and its publication you have produced other work. Sincerely yours,
On 3 July Joyce suggested that Richards might be interested in
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which had been
running serially in The Egoist. He still hoped that some
mistakes in the text would be corrected in a future impression. (To date
they have not been.)
On 2 Feb. 1915 Joyce sent Richards a list of corrections for
Dubliners, still distressed by the fact that he had not been
able
to read a set of revised proofs. He wrote again asking for copies of the
press notices of Dubliners which he copied out himself in
longhand and returned to Richards. Early in March, Ezra Pound delivered
the manuscript of A Portrait (which had been running serially
in The Egoist for a year) to Richards, whose contract with
Joyce gave him the refusal of that manuscript. On 24 March Joyce wrote,
asking a series of questions and enclosing a letter he had received from the
noted literary agent J. B. Pinker. Pinker, who was agent for Joseph Conrad
and H. G. Wells, had been introduced to Joyce's work by Wells. He had
written Joyce on 10 Feb. suggesting that he might become Joyce's agent.
On 5 April Joyce announced (Gilbert, p. 78) that he was making Pinker his
agent. He was anxiously awaiting the reaction to his book in the
Irish press.
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