Ulysses : The Little Review Version
The first fourteen episodes of James Joyce's ground-breaking novel first appeared in print in the American literary journal The Little Review . That journal was founded in 1914 by Margaret Anderson who also was its editor. In 1917, Anderson engaged Ezra Pound as the journal's foreign editor. Pound admired Joyce's work and convinced Anderson to publish Ulysses, still under development, in serial form. The novel's opening episode appeared in the March 1918 issue.
As Joyce completed an episode, he submitted it to Pound who then mailed it to The Literary Review, whose offices were then in New York. Most of the journal's readers subscribed by mail. The Post Office found "Lestrygonians," "Scylla and Charybdis," and "Cyclops" obscene and ordered that the journal issues in which they appear not be sent through the mails. Anderson was no stranger to such actions as several times in the past the Post Office banned mailings of issues for seditious content.
After publication of Episode 13 "Nausicaa," John Sumner, Secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, at the suggestion of the NY Attorney General, lodged a complaint with the Manhattan District Attorney. Anderson and her assistant, Jane Heap, were arrested. The Police Court magistrate, after preliminary hearings in October 1920, ordered the case to trial. Anderson and Heap were tried in February 1921 by a three-judge panel. The Court found both guilty of violating Section 1114 of New York's Penal Code which prohibited distribution of "filthy" material. Defendants were each fined $50. Anderson continued to publish Ulysses.
After publication of "Oxen of the Sun," Part I, Anderson determined that further parts of Ulysses as written by Joyce, would if published, violate Section 1114. Rather then request, or make major redactions, she decided to discontinue the series.
n/ Kevin Birmingham, The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce's Ulysses (New York: Penguin, 2014); David Weir, "What Did He Know, and When Did He Know It: The Little Review, Joyce, and Ulysses," James Joyce Quarterly 37, no. 3/4 (Spring-Summer, 2000); 389-412.
Joyce rewrote the episodes that appeared in The Little Review making substantial changes. In most respects, the Ulysses published by Shakespeare & Co. in 1922 is an entirely new book.
Ulysses in The Little Review on the Internet Archive
Brown University digitized many issues of The Little Review and made them available to the public through the Internet Archive. The following links will take you to the Ulysses' episodes in that digital material. Click on the link and the Internet Archive webpage will open in new browser windows, at the noted episode. Click on the associated "Vol." icon to go to the first page of the bound volume in which the episode appears.
Searchable on the Internet.Org website, no need to download.
Episode 8, Part II Feb-Mar 1919
Episode 9, Part I Apr 1919 (Scylla and Charybdis)
Episode 9, Part II May 1919
Episode 9, Part III Jun 1919
Episode 10 Jul 1919 (Wandering Rocks)
Episode 11, Part I Aug 1919 (Sirens)misprinted as "continued"
Episode 11, Part II Sep 1919
Episode 12, Part IV Mar 1920
Episode 13, Part I Apr 1920 (Nausicaa)
Episode 13, Part II May-Jun 1920
Episode 13, Part III Jul-Aug 1920
Episode 14, Part I Sep-Dec 1920 (Oxen of the Sun)
Article that appeared in the January-March 1921 issue of The Little Review written by the journal's publisher and editor, Margaret Anderson.
Links to Other Websites
Note: The webpages will open in new browser windows.
Click on the link to go to that page of the website. Click on the icon to go to the website's home page.
A history of The Little Review and the women behind it. A comprehensive piece with numerous illustrations. Posted by The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Archives on ArcGIS StoryMaps, a repository of multi-media presentations maintained by Esri Global, Inc.
From the website, James Joyce Digital Archive, maintained by Danis Rose and John O'Hanlon. Each episode, or separately published part, is in in its own pdf. Each such file has high quality scans of the journal's pages. The link is to the contents page, "Publications 1918-1922." Downloaded pdfs are searchable.
The Modernist Journals Project has placed online all issues of The Little Review from March 1914 (the first) through December 1922. After the webpage appears, scroll down for the thumbnail image links to the individual issues. Downloaded pdfs are searchable.
"The Modernist Journals Project is a research and teaching resource on the rise of modernism in the English-speaking world, with a central focus on periodical literature." The project is a joint effort of Brown University and The University of Tulsa.
