Joyce, James.

Frank Irving Fletched, sold at the Plaza Art Galleries, New York, 17 December 1937, lot 32; Everett Cunningham, proprietor of the Joyce Bookshop in San Francisco, sold at the Pacific Book Auction Galleries, San Francisco, 4 November 1994; Glenn Horowitz Bookseller, James Joyce Books and Manuscripts, 1996, item 80

Connolly, Thomas E. The Personal Library of James Joyce. A Descriptive Bibliography, University of Buffalo Studies, vol.22, no.1, April 1955
Curran, Constantine.  James Joyce Remembered, Oxford, 1968
Ellmann, Richard.  James Joyce, Oxford University Press, 1959
Slocum, John J. and Herbert Cahoon. A Bibliography of James Joyce 1882--1941, 1953

a rare survival from the `irish library' of the young james joyce.

According to a recent census less than thirty of the inscribed and dated books from Joyce's Irish library are known to exist. More than half of them reside in institutions.

"[Joyce] set himself to master languages and literatures, and read so widely that it is hard to say definitely of any important creative work published in the later nineteenth century that Joyce had not read it. His family by now accepted his literary tastes...John Joyce gave him money to buy foreign books whether or not the family had enough to eat..." (Richard Ellmann, p.78ff., discussing the period 1900-1902, when Joyce was at University College, Dublin).

The form of Joyce's signature here is akin to other examples in books from his library and letters of the period. See, for instance, the twelve books listed by Slocum & Cahoon at the end of their Bibliography of James Joyce (pp.176-78), five of which are identically signed and dated in the same year. One of the twelve includes W.B. Yeats's John Sherman and Dhoya, signed by both Yeats and Joyce ("Jas A. Joyce"). See also the unpublished letter to Frank Sheehy Skeffington of 23 December 1903, sold at Sotheby's London on 8 July 2004 (lot 202, reproduced on p.150 of the catalogue).

Books representing Joyce's "youthful reading in a particularly formative period are of considerable rarity" (Slocum & Cahoon pp.176-8). In the autumn of 1950 the Lockwood Memorial Library at Buffalo purchased the 468 volumes which remained in Joyce's Paris library at the time of his death (see Thomas E. Connolly, The Personal Library of James Joyce. A Descriptive Bibliography). However, the vast majority of these--many personally inscribed to him by other authors--were acquired by Joyce after he eloped with Nora Barnacle and left Ireland in October 1904, when he left the bulk of his library behind. A few further volumes have recently surfaced in Paris, also chiefly inscribed presentation copies to Joyce by other authors. See, for instance, T.S. Eliot's Triumphal March, inscribed by Eliot to Joyce, sold at Sotheby's London, 13 July 2006 (lot 214, £20,000).

Eight books from the Irish library found their way into the hands of his friend Constantine Curran in Ireland; many others were sent to Trieste by his brother Stanislaus but never arrived. Books purchased by Joyce in Trieste between 1907 and 1920 are normally stamped "JJ".