Ulysses first edition sold for £30,000

A first edition of James Joyce’s masterpiece Ulysses sold at auction in London yesterday for £30,000 (€43,500).

The 1922 print was snapped up by a private buyer as part of the popular English Literature & History Books sale at Sotheby’s New Bond Street.

Published in Paris in 1922 by Shakespeare and Co the lot had minor restoration to a few pieces on the spine and some slight edge wear but reached the price estimate.

Also in the sale a historic First Folio edition of Shakespeare’s plays, dating back to the 17th Century, was sold to a book dealer for £2.8 million (€4m).

London-based Simon Finch Rare Books bought the volume, which probably cost just 20 shillings when printed in 1623, and contains 36 plays, 18 of which had never previously been printed.

About 750 copies of the First Folio, published just seven years after the Bard’s death – which has been described as the most important book in English literature – were originally printed.

However, only about a third of them have survived to the present day and most of those are incomplete.

Experts believe those 18 plays – including Macbeth, Twelfth Night and Julius Caesar – may have been lost to posterity were it not for their appearance in the First Folio.

The copy on sale today was described by auctioneers as one of the two finest to appear at auction in London since the Second World War.

Sotheby’s regularly auction first editions of Ulysses, widely regarded as the greatest English novel of the 20th century, and last December sold one for £66,000 (€95,000).

Another first edition signed by Joyce set a world record when it sold for €460,000 in Christie’s in New York in 2002.

Ulysses follows the travels of Leopold Bloom around Dublin on one day, June 16, 1904, and enraged censors with many countries initially banning it.

In 1999, the Modern Library ranked Ulysses at No 1 on a list of the 100 best novels in English of the last century.

The sale at Sotheby’s auction rooms in New Bond Street also included lots of English literature, history, fine bindings, private press and children’s books, including the First Folio of Shakespeare.