Joyce letter fetches £32,265

The first letter written by James Joyce as he offered his debut work for publication sold for £32,265 at auction today.

The first letter written by James Joyce as he offered his debut work for publication sold for £32,265 (€48,926) at auction today.

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.

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.