Ulysses. by JOYCE, James - 1922

Paris: Shakespeare and Company,, 1922. André Gide's copy First edition, number 555 of 750 copies on handmade paper numbered 251 to 1,000, in the distinctive blue wrappers. The original purchaser of this copy, as recorded by Sylvia Beach, was André Gide.
Sylvia Beach's Ulysses notebook records, from 21 May 1921 to 1 July 1922, the names of subscribers and the order date for the first edition of Ulysses. Copy 555 is duly noted as purchased by André Gide on 27 February (during the month of publication).
The extant evidence suggests that André Gide was a significant admirer of Joyce. On 30 April 1931 he wrote to Joyce expressing pleasure at receiving "une lettre du grand Joyce" ("a letter from the great Joyce") and signed himself "votre admirateur attentif et affectueux" ("your attentive and affectionate admirer") (Letters, p. 218). Nora Joyce, however, after the death of her husband, was asked for her opinion of Gide. She responded that "when you've been married to the greatest writer in the world, you can't remember all the little men."
Ulysses was published in imitation of the traditional three-tiered French format aimed at both connoisseurs and readers: 100 signed copies on Dutch handmade paper; 150 large-paper copies printed on heavier vergé d'Arches, and 750 copies on vergé à barbes forming the smaller trade issue. The novel was published on 2 February 1922.
Widely recognized as the key book of 20th-century English literature, Ulysses is among the major works in the modernist canon, and its creator one of the great geniuses of all literature: "Joyce, not to mince words, is Ireland's Shakespeare, its Goethe, its Racine, its Tolstoy" (John Sutherland).
The book also proved to be a major test case for laws of freedom of expression. "Forced underground by censors... this was a cryptoclassic already before it was read, a subversive colossus" (Sherry, p. 1). Small quarto. Original blue wrappers, front wrapper lettered in white. Housed in a custom blue morocco-backed folding box. Booklabel of Pierre Bergé (loose). Some creases to front wrapper, extremities slightly frayed as usual, some very discreet repair to spine and joints but the original spine entirely preserved, crease to preliminary blank, clean within, a very good copy. Slocum & Cahoon A17; Horowitz, Census, p. 127. Richard Ellmann (ed.), Letters of James Joyce, Vol. III, 1966; Vincent Sherry, Joyce: "Ulysses", 2004.