James Joyce letter set to fetch up to €45k

The first letter written by James Joyce as he offered his debut work for publication is set to fetch up to £30,000 (€45,000) in an auction starting today.

The letter, written at the start of his years-long battle to have Dubliners published, is among a collection of Joyce artefacts, including manuscripts, books and drawings to be put on sale.

The 50 lots are included in the Quentin Keynes Collection of Books at Christie’s in London, starting today and finishing tomorrow.

The auction is expected to fetch in the region of £3m (€4.5m).

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 his beloved Ireland forever.

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

The collection was accumulated by Quentin Keynes, a lifelong explorer, and later wildlife photographer and film maker.

He spent more than 60 years collecting important and rare books throughout the world, in three principal fields – travel, natural history and modern literature.

There are items in the auction relating to such famous names as explorers Sir Richard Burton, David Livingstone and Henry Morton Stanley.

A letter written by Livingstone and left in a bottle at the mouth of the Zambesi river, requesting urgent provisions from any passing ships that found it is one of the highlights of the collection, and is estimated to fetch between £15,000 (€22,000) and £20,000 (€30,000).

Travel books and manuscripts will be sold today, and natural history and modern literature tomorrow.