Joyce letter fetches €48,928 at auction

THE first letter written by James Joyce as he offered his debut work for publication sold for almost €50,000 at auction yesterday.

The letter, written at the start of his long battle to have Dubliners published, was bought at Christie’s in London by a member of the trade.

The price of €48,928, which was more than €3,000 above the highest estimated value, included buyer’s premium.

In the letter, written on September 23, 1905, when the author was just 23, Joyce pleaded to publisher W Heinemann: “The book is not a collection of tourist impressions but an attempt to represent certain aspects of the life of one of the European capitals.”

W Heinemann rejected the work, and Joyce continued to battle for nearly a decade to have it published.

An edition was printed in 1910 but later burned by the printers who considered it offensive.

The bitterness Joyce felt as a result culminated in him leaving Ireland forever.

By the time Dubliners was finally published, in London in 1914, Joyce and his family were living in exile in Zurich.

Other notable sales amongst the 50-lot collection of Joyce artefacts, which included manuscripts, books and drawings, was the sale of a rare copy of his satirical poem Holy Office which fetched €43,494.

One of only 25 copies of an Obelisk Press edition of Pomes Penyeach, meanwhile, sold for €39,870.

The Joyce collection, which sold for a combined total of €406,226 was part of a wider portfolio of over 800 treasures accumulated by Quentin Keynes, a lifelong explorer, and later wildlife photographer and film maker.