Joyce, James

broadside printed on one side on white wove paper (289 x 221mm.), FIRST EDITION, (though an earlier edition was reputed to have been printed in Dublin, none are known to have survived), one of probably less than 100 copies, Thomas Koehler's copy, inscribed on the reverse in his hand "Joyce | The Holy Office | Sept. 09' ", folded for mailing with short splits at ends of vertical crease
[with]: autograph letter signed by Koehler to Joyce (12, Charleville Road, Rathmines, Dublin, 12 February 1937), sending him one of Koehler's works and recalling that "I still have a copy of the 'Holy Office'" (probably a retained draft), with envelope; together in collector's black chemise and morocco backed box by the Chelsea Bindery

Slocum & Cahoon A2

Condition is described in the main body of the cataloguing, when appropriate.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

"My spirit shall they never have Nor make my soul with theirs as one..."

THE EARLIEST EXTANT JOYCE PUBLICATION, from the library of Joyce's friend Thomas Koehler (sometimes Keller) who  -- so reports the author's brother Stanislaus -- was the recipient of the first copy of the work, as Joyce had instructed. Koehler and Joyce had become good friends in the years before Joyce's departure for Europe in 1904; Koehler later became manager of the printing firm Hely's, where Leopold Bloom would once have worked.

No copy of Joyce's supposed first publication, Et Tu, Healy!, a poem written at the age of nine and printed by his father, has ever been located.

Copies of The Holy Office, a scabrous attack on members of the Irish Literary Revival and other literary compatriots, and a declaration of Joyce's alternative aesthetic, was printed at the author's expense in Pola--then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire--between November 1904 and March 1905. Copies were  then sent by the author to Russell, Gogarty and other targets of the piece in Dublin. The poem had been written in Dublin in the summer of 1904 before Joyce and Nora's elopement to the Continent. Joyce initially sent it to Constantine Curran, editor of the University College magazine St. Stephen's, but the editor returned the "unholy thing" to the author with a humorous letter on 8 August; Joyce then undertook to publish the broadside himself, but when the printer, at the end of the same month, asked him to pay for the broadsheets and to collect them, he could not find the money (Richard Ellmann, James Joyce (1982), p. 167).