University of Virginia Library

I am grateful to Mr. George Healey, curator of rare books at the Cornell University Library, for giving me permission to publish from the Mennen collection. I want also to acknowledge the late Miss Weaver's granting permission to Robert Scholes of the University of Iowa to publish these letters, and I want to thank Professor Scholes for allowing me to edit the letters and for his guidance in this work. Finally I wish to thank the University of Delaware for a summer research grant whose result is this edition.

Thomas Franklin Grant Richards, publisher of Dubliners (1914), whose contract with Joyce gave him the right to examine Joyce's further works for publication. Richards decided on May 18, 1915 not to accept Portrait. See Richard Ellmann's James Joyce (New York, 1959), pp. 395, 413. Also see Robert Scholes' "Grant Richards to James Joyce," Studies in Bibliography, XVI (1963), 158-9.

The serial publication of Portrait began in the Egoist in February 1914 and continued (except for the issues of September 15, October 1 and 15, November 2 and 16, 1914, when Joyce could not mail the manuscript from Austrian territory, and the "Special Imagist Number," May 1915) until September 1915.

c/o Gioacchino Veneziani, Murano, Venice, a forwarding address Joyce used in order to receive mail from England while he was in Austria (Trieste).

Joyce declined Miss Weaver's offer to send the Egoist, presumably because he wished to wait until he had settled in Switzerland. He replied (30 April 1915), "It would give me great pleasure to receive them and read them but there are many obstacles in the way." Letters of James Joyce, ed. Stuart Gilbert (New York, 1957), p. 80.

Joyce had written (30 April 1915), "I suppose my novel has now come to an end," and in his reply to this letter (12 July 1915) he said, "As you ask me I think it would be better if the instalments of my novel could be made a little longer so as to finish the serial publication a little earlier than November." Gilbert, pp. 82, 83.

Messrs. Partridge and Cooper omitted the second paragraph of Chapter III, the one concerning Dublin's red light district, beginning, "It would be a gloomy secret night," and ending, "Coming in to have a short time?" Portrait (New York, 1964), p. 102. Also in the italicized phrase "My excellent friend Bombados," they substitute "Pompados." Portrait, p. 105.

In the fourth chapter of Portrait Messrs. Partridge and Cooper quailed at part of Joyce's description of the envoy from the fair courts of life. They omitted the sentence, "Her thighs, fuller and softhued as ivory, were bared almost to the hips where the white fringes of her drawers were like featherings of soft white down." Portrait, p. 171.

Messrs. Ballantyne, Hanson and Co. omitted these lines from the portion of Chapter V in the Egoist, II, No. 8 (August 1915): "The stout student who stood below them on the steps farted briefly. Dixon turned towards him saying in a soft voice: — Did an angel speak?" The word "also" was omitted from the subsequent line for the sake of continuity. Portrait, p. 230. Ballantyne twice substitutes two asterisks for the word "ballocks" (Portrait, p. 231), and misprints the phrase "Lead him home with a sugan" (Portrait, p. 236) as "Lead him home with sugar." Still, Ballantyne continued as the Egoist's printer until February 1916, when Spottiswoode and Co. took up the job. Spottiswoode printed only two numbers, and the Egoist was thereafter printed by The Complete Press, of West Norwood.

James B. Pinker, a London agent who became Joyce's representative in April 1915.

Dora Marsden, founder of the Freewoman (1911) which became the New Freewoman (1913) and finally the Egoist (1914), was the editor of the magazine until June 1914 when Harriet Weaver became editor. Miss Marsden, as "contributing editor," continued to write lengthy lead articles on philosophical and political topics.

The London publisher Martin Secker turned down Portrait. Mr. Pinker next tried Duckworth who refused the novel in December 1915.

Madame Muriel Ciolkowska, the Egoist's Paris correspondent, whose columns "Fighting Paris" and "Passing Paris" appeared regularly, and who arranged with her sister in Switzerland for earlier manuscripts of Portrait to reach London from Trieste for the serial publication.

Joyce wrote to Pinker (6 December 1915) advising him to accept Harriet Weaver's offer to publish Portrait. "I agree to this proposal if you do. I dislike the prospect of waiting another nine years before my next book appears — with the result which you know. . . . In any case Miss Weaver's proposal is most friendly and I beg you to consider it." Gilbert, p. 87.

Poèmes par André Spire.

Joyce's letter of 22 January 1916. He offers to telegraph again "on receipt of the second remittance." Gilbert, p. 89.

Joyce replied (10 March 1916) that he would trust the proofreading to Ezra Pound, or if Pound could not that a reader be found, "the fee in the latter case being charged to me." If, on the other hand, Miss Weaver were to send proofs to Zurich, Joyce promised to correct and return them in a day, "if the attack of rheumatism from which I am suffering does not go to my eyes." Gilbert, pp. 89-90.

"I have no preference," Joyce answered. Gilbert, p. 89.

A contract settling publishing rights for Portrait, in which Mr. Pinker was to "accept unconditionally, subject to his commission of 10%, whatever terms you [Harriet Weaver] propose." Gilbert, p. 89. Pinker wrote to Joyce on March 23 that he had drawn up such an agreement with Miss Weaver. His letter, Cornell No. 987.

Turnbull and Spears.

In his letter to Miss Weaver (17 March 1916) Pound had written, "If all printers refuse. . . I suggest that largish blank spaces be left where passages are cut out. Then the excisions can be manifolded (not carbon copies, but another process) by typewriter on good paper, and if necessary I will paste them in myself. The public can be invited to buy with or without restorations and the copyright can be secured on the book as printed. That is to say the restorations will be privately printed and the book-without-them 'published.' And damn the censors." The Letters of Ezra Pound, ed. D. D. Paige (New York, 1950), pp. 74, 75.

Joyce notified Mr. Pinker of Pound's plan (31 March 1916) and said, "I agree to this or any scheme by which the book shall be published as I wrote it and as quickly as possible." Gilbert, p. 91.

Pound also told Miss Weaver, "As for early or late in the season, I think that is all nonsense in connection with a book of this sort. If it were to be sold by Smith and the other barrators, or if it were to go through the usual channels of corruption there would be some reason for consulting their times and seasons. But a book like this which the diseased and ailing vulgar will not buy can take its own course." Paige, p. 74.

One of the American publishers was John Marshall. Pound wrote to Harriet Weaver (30 March 1916), "I have just written him direct a very strong letter re Joyce, advising him to print the Joyce in preference to my book [This Generation], if his capital is limited. . . . [Send] the leaves of The Egoist containing the novel and also the bits the printer cut out. He may as well have it all, and at once while my letter is hot in his craw." Paige, p. 75.

Miss Weaver refers to the last section of the lead article in the Egoist, III, No. 3 (March 1, 1916), 34-35, signed "H. S. W.," which deals with Portrait's publication difficulties and also announces "we propose to publish [Portrait] ourselves."

Byrceson Treharne, a Welsh composer who set poem XXXVI from Chamber Music, was a fellow internee with the music critic Leigh Henry in Ruhleben, a German detention camp for enemy non-combatants. Treharne's letter to Joyce (14 May 1916), Cornell No. 1285.

"Extracts From the Letters of a Prisoner of War," Egoist, II, No. 12 (December 1, 1915), 185-6.

i.e., cuttings from the pages of the Egoist containing installments of Portrait.

Drama (February, 1916), on Joyce's play Exiles.

Ben W. Huebsch. For his letter to Harriet Weaver see Gilbert, pp. 91-2.

E. Byrne Hackett, a New Haven book dealer. Miss Weaver had sent him a set of Egoist numbers containing Portrait with corrections on March 31, 1916. Her accompanying letter to Byrne Hackett is in Gilbert, p. 90.

William Heinemann, a London publisher. Pound had arranged for him to read Portrait in his set of Egoists. See Paige, p. 85.

Miss Weaver's letter is in Gilbert, pp. 92-3.

See Gilbert, pp. 93-4.

The ammendments concerned Huebsch's desire to get rights to also publish Dubliners, Chamber Music, and "an option on the book which would normally succeed A Portrait. . . . so that by concentration of interest and economy of effort, [Joyce] may be properly introduced on this side." Gilbert, pp. 91-2.

Joyce made this suggestion in a letter (16 September 1916), in Gilbert, pp. 95-6.

Francis Hackett.

Joyce said he did not remember Hackett. Gilbert, p. 97.

The letter from Huebsch requests Miss Weaver to send him "a portrait of Joyce and as much biographical material and items of interest concerning him as possible," and a copy of Chamber Music.

Pound's article appeared after the publication of Portrait. "After much difficulty The Egoist itself turns publisher and produces A Portrait of the Artist as a volume, for the hatred of ordinary English publishers for good prose is, like the hatred of the Quarterly Review for good poetry, deep-rooted, traditional." "James Joyce — At Last the Novel Appears," Egoist, IV, No. 2 (February 1917), 21.

Roald (Raoul) Kristian, staff artist for the Egoist. His woodcut from Joyce's photograph appeared with Pound's Egoist article.

Joyce's letter (30 October 1916), Gilbert, p. 97.

Elkin Mathews, London publisher of Chamber Music (1907).

Joyce's letter (8 November 1916), Gilbert, pp. 98-99.

Pound wrote (14 November 1916), "I am not trying to get out of a job, but I think these things should be tried before the reader of the Egoist is required to hear any more 'Me on Joyce.'" The "things" to try were testimonials from Edward Marsh, Lord Asquith's secretary who helped get Joyce a Civil List pension, H. G. Wells, George Moore, Martin Secker, a London publisher, and "anyone else you can." Paige, p. 98.

The slips, the "enclosures" Miss Weaver sent along to Huebsch, contained the biographical information Huebsch had requested. The reference for which Harriet Weaver is grateful occurs in a paragraph on Ezra Pound. "But for his [Pound's] friendly help and the enterprise of Miss Weaver, editor of The Egoist, in accepting A Portrait of the Artist after it had been refused by all publishers, my novel would still be unpublished." Gilbert, p. 99.

Printed sheets of Portrait to be bound in England.

Sir Arthur Clutton-Brock, English journalist.

The "last address," Seefeldstrasse 54, parterre rechts, Zurich VIII. The "new address," Seefeldstrasse 73, Zurich VIII.

Michael Healy, Nora Joyce's uncle, one of Joyce's most constant Irish friends.

Joyce was indeed ill. His attacks of glaucoma had begun this month.

"'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,' by James Joyce, [was] published rather obscurely by 'The Egoist,' Ltd., because nobody else will issue it on this side of the Atlantic. It is a book to buy and read and lock up, but it is not a book to miss. Its claim to literature is as good as the claim of the last book of 'Gulliver's Travels.'" "James Joyce," The Nation, XX, No. 21 (February 24, 1917), 710-12. Wells' review also appeared in The New Republic (March 10, 1917). Joyce wrote to thank Wells for the appreciative review, Gilbert, p. 100.

Clutton-Brock's review TLS, XVI (March 1, 1917), 103-4. Joyce wrote to thank Clutton-Brock for his review. Sir Arthur replied (18 March 1917), apologizing for his "flimsy and hasty" criticism, and asking whether "the sad scepticism of [Portrait] is merely recollection for you or whether it is your own state of mind." Clutton-Brock's letter, Cornell No. 453.

Future announced the publication of Portrait in I, No. 4 (February 1917), 85, and promised to review the novel in their next number. The review did not appear, however, until the June issue.

Commercial circulating libraries.

The advertisement, containing excerpts from press notices of Portrait, covered the full back page of the April Egoist and was continued in the May and June numbers. The exaggeration is contained in Miss Marsden's introductory paragraph. "THE first edition of this masterpiece among works of modern fiction (for which not only was no British publisher to be found willing to publish, but no British printer willing to print) is now nearly exhausted. Copies of the first edition, 'Printed in America,' will be very valued possessions when The Portrait becomes more widely recognized — as it certainly will — as an outstanding feature in the permanent literature of the present period. Readers of THE EGOIST who have not already secured a copy should order at once."

"Green Sickness," New Republic, X, No. 122 (March 3, 1917), 138-9.

John Quinn, lawyer and book collector who had bought the manuscript of Exiles from Joyce, and who later defended the Little Review's serial publication of Ulysses.

See Gilbert, pp. 102-3.

"We seem to be back in baby-land, and there is a little too much about smells." The English Review, No. 102 (May 1917), 478.

Ernest A. Boyd, reviewer and literary historian, author of Ireland's Literary Renaissance (1916).

The Challenge did review Portrait. "Mr. Joyce's book is one of the strangest, most interesting and most unpleasant we have read for a long time." Signed C. H. S. M. [Rev. Charles H. S. Matthews]. The Challenge, VII, No. 161 (May 25, 1917), 54. Joyce wrote to the editor of the paper thanking him for the review. His note was passed on to Rev. Matthews who replied to Joyce (13 June 1917) that Portrait had been recommended to him by his friend Clutton-Brock and that "it was not altogether an easy book for a Clerical Reviewer to notice in a Church Paper." Matthews' letter, Cornell No. 875.

Joyce had been advised to have an operation, but put it off until August 24, 1917. See Ellmann, pp. 426, 431.

Jean de Bosschère, poet and reviewer.

Henry Davray, critic, later editor of the Anglo-French Review.

John Cournos, essayist, translator, and faculty member of Pound's London College of Arts (1914).

Joyce's letter (7 July 1917), Gilbert, pp. 103-4.

Professor Federico Olivieri, professor of English literature at the University of Turin.

Mario Borsa, editor of the Milanese journal Secolo, former London correspondent for the Trieste paper Il Piccolo della Sera when Joyce was also on its staff.

In his letter Joyce had asked that Miss Weaver send review copies of Portrait along with press notices to Olivieri and Borsa, to be accompanied "by a diplomatic letter on your official notepaper."

Joyce had written (18 July 1917), "I wrote you a letter a few hours ago but my daughter who is an 'absentminded beggar' lost it somewhere in the street." Gilbert, p. 106.

Joyce enclosed some leaflets containing press notices of Portrait to be inserted in review copies of Richards' edition of Exiles, and asked whether it was permissible for him to ship seven or eight hundred more leaflets. Gilbert, p. 107.

Dr. C. Pouptis, editor of the Greek review Εοπεια, in which a notice of Portrait appeared on June 29, 1917, p. 410.

Frank Albert.

The Egoist Press published Prufrock and Other Observations in the Spring of 1917.

Dr. Nicolo Vidacovich, Triestine translator and lawyer who helped Joyce in his Volta movie theater scheme.

See Gilbert, p. 107.

Robert Johnson and Co., Ltd.

Arthur Symons.

Joyce's aunt, Mrs. Josephine Murray, upon whom the exiled novelist frequently relied for news and factual data about Dublin.

"I remember Miss Weaver, in wool gloves, bringing Ulysses in typescript to our teatable at Hogarth House. . . . Would we devote our lives to printing it? The indecent pages looked so incongruous: she was spinsterly, buttoned up. And the pages reeled with indecency." Virginia Woolf, A Writer's Diary (London, 1953), p. 363.

Miss Weaver's plan was to find another printer to print Ulysses in installments which would be sold along with the regular Egoist as supplements.

Joyce had written (18 May 1918) telling Miss Weaver not to feel obligated to the serial publication of Ulysses ("I beg you not to consider any imaginary claims of mine.") and suggested she might print another book in serial form. Gilbert, p. 114.

Joyce asked Miss Weaver to tell Huebsch that he would not be able to send a complete typescript of Ulysses by autumn.

Joyce had outlined his plans for the various episodes in Ulysses and then apologized for having done so, "This subject I am sure must be rather tiresome to you." Gilbert, p. 113.

Joyce invited Miss Weaver to "modify in any way the terms of our existing contract" if she so wished (20 March 1918). Gilbert, p. 112.

W. L. Courtney, editor of the Fortnightly Review, to whom Joyce had asked Miss Weaver to send a copy of Portrait c/o the Daily Telegraph. Gilbert, p. 113.

George Crès and Co., Paris publishers who had earlier offered to print Ulysses for the Egoist.

Joyce's letter (2 July 1919), Gilbert, pp. 126-7.

The Egoist carried the "Nestor" episode in the January-February issue, pp. 11-14, and the "Proteus" episode in the March-April issue, pp. 26-30. The "Hades" episode began in the July Egoist, pp. 42-46, and continued in the September issue, pp. 56-60. Part of the "Wandering Rocks" episode appeared in the December number, pp. 74-78, the Egoist's last issue.

Patricia Hutchins records Miss Weaver's having said in an interview, "The problem of keeping The Egoist going had been a hard one and partly for this reason and partly from the incompatibility of its two sides, the philosophic, represented by Miss Marsden whose editorials were found by many subscribers to have become too abstruse for easy reading, and the literary, the appeal of which was wider, it was decided to suspend publication at the end of 1919 and concentrate on book publication." James Joyce's World (London, 1957), p. 120. The Egoist magazine was discontinued in December 1919, but the Egoist as a publishing company continued until 1924, even finally succeeding in coming out with an edition of Ulysses printed in France from Sylvia Beach's plates in 1922.

Joyce replied (6 August 1919), "While I thank Miss Marsden for the compliment she pays me, I should prefer to see my book (Ulysses) priced at 3/ — which is about its value, I think." Gilbert, p. 129-30.

Richard Aldington, novelist, poet, and critic, who held an editorial position with the Egoist.

The "worries" probably concern Joyce's second suit against Henry Carr.

The message was a telegram which Joyce received on May fourteenth from a firm of solicitors, Monro, Saw and Company: "Hope you are well letter from Monro client wishes to settle 5000 pounds 5% war loan upon you hearty congratulations letter following Nora Joyce." Miss Weaver tells Joyce here for the first time that she is the anonymous donor of this gift and others handled by Monro, Saw and Co. since early 1917.

Gilbert, pp. 129-30.

August 7, 1919.

Miss Weaver is paraphrasing from Joyce's letter of 6 August 1919. "But in the compass of one day to compress all these wanderings and clothe them in the form of this day is for me only possible by such variation which, I beg you to believe, is not capricious." Gilbert, p. 129.

Joyce had written (20 July 1919), "As soon as I mention or include any person in it [Ulysses] I hear of his or her death or departure or misfortune." And in the subsequent letter (6 August 1919), "In confirmation of what I said in my last letter I enclose a cutting from a Dublin paper just received, announcing the death of one of the figures [J. G. Lidwell] in the episode [Sirens]." Gilbert, p. 129.

Via Sanita, 2, Trieste.

"bloody"

Probably The Caliph's Design. Architects! Where Is Your Vortex? Published by The Egoist. Ltd., November 1919.

Joyce's house had been ruined during an air raid.

Miss Weaver refers to Joyce's poem "Bahnhofstrasse," which appeared in the Anglo-French Review, III, No. 1 (August 1919), 44, in a slightly different version from the one in Pomes Penyeach (1927).

Joyce asked Harriet Weaver to accept the manuscript as a gift of gratitude in his letter of July 20, 1919. Gilbert, p. 129. Miss Weaver later presented the manuscript to the National Library of Ireland. It is on this manuscript that Chester G. Anderson chiefly based his textual study of Portrait, Columbia University doctoral thesis (1962), the results of which are incorporated into the new Viking Press Portrait (1964), ed. Chester Anderson and Richard Ellmann.

"The 'original' original I tore up and threw into the stove about eight years ago [1911] in a fit of rage on account of the trouble over Dubliners," Joyce wrote Miss Weaver (6 January 1920). Gilbert, p. 136.

One of the snapshots Harriet Weaver mentioned in the previous letter was taken in St. Ives. Joyce inquired if her family was from there.

F. H. Schimpff, a Triestine bookseller. Gilbert (p. 136) reads the name "Schimgoff."

All three books were published by the Egoist Press. Lewis's Tarr had been serialized in the Egoist from April 1916 to November 1917.

Silvio Benco, editor of the Triestine evening journal Il Piccolo della Sera.

Joyce received a letter from Bernhard Tauchnitz (5 May 1920) thanking him for sending reviews of Portrait and explaining that he would be happy to consider the possibility of publishing the novel if Joyce would send him a copy. A Tauchnitz edition of Portrait did come out in 1930. Tauchnitz's letter, Cornell No. 1284.

The Italian version of Exiles, trans. Carlo Linati.

Joyce had outlined his plan for Ulysses in his letter of May 18, 1918. Gilbert, p. 113.

Joyce's poem "A Memory of the Players in a Mirror at Midnight" appeared in Poesia, I, No. 1 (April 15, 1920), 27.