Ulysses

Initially rejected by several printers in Dublin and London for containing ‘obscene’ content, Ulysses was first published in book form in a limited-edition printing of 1000 copies by Shakespeare and Company in Paris in 1922. A subsequent printing was impounded by US customs and for a period the novel was famed for its notoriety rather than its literary achievement.

Like its author, Ulysses exists in a complicated push-pull relationship with its language – English – and its setting – Ireland. Joyce returns to the themes that had preoccupied him in previous works, including nationalism and empire, religion, identity and sex in a novel which gloriously brings Dublin on June 16th 1904 to the page.