Ulysses by JOYCE, JAMES - 1934

New York: Random House, 1934. First legal US Edition. Original cloth, original dust jacket. Very Good/Very Good. THE FIRST LEGAL EDITION OF ULYSSES IN THE UNITED STATES. Complete with the printing of Judge Woolsey's landmark decision legalizing the book. "Random House had commissioned [Ernst] Reichl to design the Random House edition of Ulysses, while Judge Woolsey was still reading the book in Petersham, so that production could begin the moment it was legalized... At 10:15 in the morning on December 7, 1933, just minutes after the decision was filed, Donald Klopfer [one of the founders of Random House] called up Ernst Reichl and said, 'Go ahead.'...

"Reichl, a PhD in art history, had designed everything himself - the binding, the cover, the jacket, the interior - to ensure that every aspect of Ulysses would be cohesive. It had taken him two months to test a variety of fonts and formats before he produced a sample copy set in Baskerville.

"It was just what Random House wanted: bold, clean and jarringly modern. 'Stately, plump Buck Mulligan' began with a monumental S on a page all to itself. Five minutes after Reichl got the call from Random House, his team began printing the first chapters. They included the text of Judge Woolsey's decision so that if the government brought charges again, Woolsey's praise would be entered into evidence. It remained in the Random House edition for decades, making it possibly the most widely read legal descision in U.S. history.

"Ulysses was bound and delivered to the publisher five weeks later..." and it was a huge success. "There was only one problem. The book that Random House gave Reichl to print wasn't the latest Shakespeare and Company edition. It was Samuel Roth's edition [illegally printed in Two Worlds Monthly]. The first legal edition of Ulysses in the United States was the corrupted text of a literary pirate." (Birmingham).

New York: Random House, 1934. Thick octavo, original cloth, original dust jacket. Book fine, dust jacket (designed by Reichl with "Reichl" stamped at bottom right of front panel) with mild toning to spine and a few spots of edgewear. One of the nicest copies we've seen of an important book that is particularly prone to wear.

References:

Kevin Birmingham, The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce's Ulysses, 2014, pp. 330-331.