Joyce, James

Anna Livia Plurabelle Part I  from "Work In Progress."  Cambridge: The Orthological Institute, [ca. 1929]

12 inch, 78 rpm shellac record album with typed and autograph label pasted over His Master's Voice pictorial label; few light surface scratches and smudges to shellac, mostly on one side of album only. Later sleeve.

Slocum and Cahoon, p. 173.

Selling for 2 guineas, it seems that there  are a number of label designs associated with this recording. We have seen typed labels with autograph additions as here, giving the institute's name and address, price and number (here XV) in ink pasted over the HMV  pictorial label (this example),  a printed rather than typed label without illustration and finally one with the  HMV pictorial label (depicting the iconic dog and gramophone) unaltered without the paste-over.

The autograph corrections are presumably in producer C.K. Ogden's hand. Philosopher and mathematician, Ogden had been approached at Joyce's request to produce an introduction to Tales Told of Shem and Shaun and thus arranged for this present reading to be recorded. Joyce's near blindness by this time meant that rather than give a reading, he was given lines from a whispering prompter in order to complete the project, one of only three times he was recorded (with only two of the recordings issued, the other his rare reading from Ulysses). 

"How beautiful the 'Anna Livia' recording is, and how amusing Joyce's rendering of an Irish washerwoman's brogue!" (Beach: Shakespeare and Company, 1956)