Frances Mary Sweet, Claud Sykes, and Ulysses
Frances Mary Sweet was born on October 7, 1892 in Mandalay, in the then British colony of Burma which was administered by the government of British India. Her parents were Sergeant William Henry ("Harry") Sweet and Ada (Roberts) Sweet. Sgt. Sweet served in the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry, a regiment that appears in Ulysses. Frances was the first of the couple's three children.
n/ Army Service Record of William Henry Sweet, UK National Archives WO 786/42. The Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry assisted in the clean-up of the massive damage caused by the biscuit tin which the Citizen threw at Leopold Bloom. U (Gabler) 12:1891-92.
All photographs of Ada Roberts, William Henry Sweet, and their children are from the genealogy website, FamilySearch, where they were posted by Emma McDowell.
William Henry Sweet
William Henry Sweet was born in 1862 to 15-year-old, unmarried, Mary Anne Sweet of St. Mabyn, a village in Cornwall. She was the youngest child of Richard Sweet, an agricultural laborer, and his wife Susan. At the time of her pregnancy, Mary Anne was the only Sweet child still living with their parents. Mary Anne gave birth to William in Wadebridge, a town 5 kilometers west of St. Mabyn. Her parents probably sent her there to live with relatives when she began "to show."
Little is known of William's early life. As was common for the times, he probably at first lived with his mother and one of her relatives. With them, Mary Anne was effectively an unpaid domestic servant. When older, William was a boarding pupil at St. Saviour's Grammar School, Ardingly, Sussex, 50 kilometers south of London. At St. Saviour's, he would have been one of the school's few charity cases then known as "free boys" as they attended for free. Note that in Ulysses, the character Leopold Bloom, of poor parents, was a free boy at the Dublin High School. For more on St. Saviour's Grammar School, click on the link and a pdf from this website will open in a popup window.)
n/ Sweet Household Return, Census of England & Wales 1851; Barlow Household Returns, Censuses of England & Wales, 1891 & 1901; Service Record, UK National Archives WO 76/42; West Sussex Journal, November 11, 1873; website of Ardingly College, www.ardingly.com.
In 1878, when William was aged 16 and presumably at school, his mother, 31-year-ol Mary Anne Sweet, married a 22-year-old Londoner, Arthur Frederick Barlow. At the time, Mary Anne went by the name Annie Marie Sweet. Her husband, a warehouseman, never adopted William or had the courts change William's surname.
As the son of a working-class, unwed mother, with a working-class step-father, William's job opportunities in Victorian England were limited. This probably prompted him, at age 18, to seek enlistment in the British Army. There, as a relatively well-educated soldier, he could advance through the ranks. On October 12, 1880, the 32nd (Cornwall) Regiment of Foot took on William and sent him to the regimental depot in Bodmin, Cornwall for basic training. After completion of that three-month course, he joined his regiment, then stationed at Aldershot Camp, Hampshire. Private Sweet was soon called "Harry" by his barrack-roommates and that became the nickname he would use thereafter.
In 1881, as part of the Childers Army Reforms, the War Office linked the 32nd Foot to the 46th Foot to form the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry. Harry's regiment became its 1st Battalion, the 46th Foot its 2nd Battalion. In 1884, the 1st/DCLI was in Dublin and the following year, Malta, where it remained for three years. The 1st/DCLI would not return to the UK until 1906.
n/ Marriage Registrations, England & Wales, Chelsea, 1878; Barlow Household Return, Census of England & Wales, 1901; Service Record, UK National Archives WO 76/42; War Office, Report of the Inspector General of Recruiting for 1880, 1882, [C. 3169]; Lawrence S. Snell, A Short History of the Duke of York's Light Infantry (Aldershot: Gale & Polden, 1945);
In 1888, the War Office attached Harry's battalion to the Indian Army which stationed it first in Madras (now Chennai). There, on October 1, 1890, 28-year-old Harry, then a sergeant, married 18-year-old Ada Roberts in St. Matthias Anglican Church.
Ada was born on April 13, 1872, in Dublin to Sergeant George Roberts and his wife Hannah Mary. Sgt. Robert's father was a gardener; Hannah (Sands) Robert's father a coachman. At the time, George was a well-paid armourer-sergeant with the 20th Regiment of Foot. To improve his prospects, George transferred to the 40th Regiment of Foot, then under orders for India and he, his wife, and their 6-month-old daughter sailed from Queenstown, Ireland for Bombay. The transfer paid off for George as in 1886, he left the army for civil employment with the Indian Army. When his daughter married Harry, he was Civil Chief Master Armourer with the Madras Ordnance Department.
One year after Harry and Ada wed, Indian Army HQ sent 1st/DCLI to Burma. There, it took part in the Wunthoo Expedition to quell the Tasqbaws Revolt.
Ada and Sgt. Sweet
Madras, c. 1890.
While Harry was on campaign, his wife resided in Mandalay where on October 2, 1892, she gave birth to the couple's first child: Frances Mary. In 1893, the 1st/DCLI returned to India and in 1897, took part in the Tirrah Expedition to suppress disturbances in India's North-West Frontier.
n/ Snell, Short History of the DCLI; British Armed Forces and Overseas Vital Records, Marriages, 1890; Register of Long Service & Good Conduct Medals, UK National Archives WO 102/7/6; Irish Birth Registrations, South Dublin Poor Law Union, Palmerston District, 1872; Church of England Parish Marriage Records, St. John's Church, Manchester, October 27, 1860; Cameron Pulsifer, "Beyond the Queen's Shilling," Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research 80, No. 324 (Winter 2002): 326-34; R.H. Raymond Smythies, History of the 40th (2nd Somersetshire) Regiment (Devonport: 1894); Quarterly Indian Army and Civil List, October 1890; Madras Weekly Mail, August 2, 1894..
QMS Sweet, Mason
India, c. 1899.
In 1899, Harry received the Long Service and Good Conduct Medal for 18-years' exemplary service. At the time, he held the second-highest enlisted infantry rank, Quartermaster-Sergeant, and was on his battalion's staff as the principal assistant to its quartermaster, a commissioned officer. On the left is a photograph of QMS Sweet wearing Masonic regalia. Note that the chevrons for QMS, unique for that rank, are worn "point up."
In 1900, the War Office took 1st/DCLI off the Indian Army List and sent it to Ceylon to man a prisoner-war-camp for captured soldiers of the Boer armies (2nd Anglo-Boer War, 1899-1902). Two years later, 1st/DCLI went to South Africa as part of the occupation force of the defeated Boer Republics: Orange Free State and Transvaal Republic of South Africa. Harry; however, did not go to South Africa with his unit. In 1902, the War Office promoted him to Sergeant-Major and assigned him to the DCLI's depot at Bodmin, Cornwall. There, he was the Regimental Sergeant-Major for the 32nd Regimental District and its depot formation.
n/ War Office, Royal Warrant for the Pay, Appointment, Promotion, and Non-Effective Pay of the Army, 1899, Art. 1246; Snell, A Short History of the DCLI; Monthly Army List, March 1903.
Two years after Harry's promotion to the pinnacle of the enlisted ranks, the quartermaster of 1st/DCLI retired and that battalion's commanding officer recommended Sgt.-Maj. Sweet as his replacement. The War Office approved the nomination and in March 1904, commissioned Harry a quartermaster with honorary combatant rank of first-lieutenant.
Most "gentlemen" combatant officers, as well as members of "polite" society, did not regard former ranker, non-combatant officers as of their class.* Accordingly, officers who had been promoted from the ranks had limited social intercourse with their colleagues and in the case of non-combatant officers, were usually restricted members of their messes. For example, the officers' mess of 2nd/Royal Welsh Fusiliers allowed its quartermaster to "dine in" only on Fridays. Junior combatant officers did not treat quartermasters with the same deference they showed their peers. Often, such combatant officers would not salute senior-ranking quartermasters as they viewed those former enlisted men as "old buggers of no importance."
Lt. Sweet rejoined 1st/DCLI in Middelburg, Transvaal and two years later, on April 11, 1906, returned to England with his unit. Six months after arriving home, while stationed in Gravesend, Kent, 48-year-old William Henry Sweet, who was suffering from pleurisy, died of a heart-attack on October 10, 1910. His battalion held an elaborate, military funeral: The entire unit marched from the barracks to Gravesend-Milton Cemetery while the band played Chopin's "Funeral March." His flag-draped coffin was carried on a gun-carriage followed immediately by his 16-year-old son Richard, behind whom marched 30 soldiers carrying wreaths.
* The non-combatant officers who were commissioned from the ranks were quartermasters, ridingmasters, district artillery officers, officers of the engineer coast battalion, and commissaries of the Indian Army's support departments.
n/ London Gazette, March 25, 1904; Roger Deeks, "Officers Not Gentlemen: Officers Commissioned from the Ranks of the Pre-First World War British Regular Army, 1903-1918," PhD Thesis (Birmingham: 2017), 64-75; Army and Navy Gazette, July 31, 1904; Cornishman, April 12, 1906; Cornish Guardian, November 4, 1910.
Frances Mary Sweet
As a newborn, Frances lived in Mandalay's European cantonment with her mother while her father was on campaign with his battalion. When Frances reached school age, her mother likely took her to England. In March 1901, 8-year-old Frances was living with her maternal grandmother, Mary Anne, then married to a warehouseman, Arthur Frederick Barlow. The Barlows lived in London's North Chelsea neighborhood. Later in 1901, Frances returned to her family when the Warr Office sent her father's battalion to Ceylon.
In Ceylon, the Sweet family lived in a large villa that it likely shared with another senior NCO's family. In the picture below of the Sweet family , Frances is on the right standing next to her younger brother, Richard. Note that at the time, mothers dressed their very young sons as girls and allowed their hair to grow long. Frances re-entered the army's school system as regulations required enlisted men's children to attend school until age 14.
Sweet Family, 1901
In 1902, Frances and her family moved to Bodmin, Cornwall where the DCLI's regimental depot was located. There, the Sweets lived in warrant officer quarters (an attached, 2-storey house) at Bodmin Barracks. In 1904, when the War Office commissioned Harry a quartermaster and sent him to South Africa, it's not known whether his family relocated there. Beginning in April 1906, when the 1st/DCLI returned to England, Lt. Sweet and his family would live in private, off-post housing, as the army did not provide quarters for officers' families. Harry would also have a room at the barracks officers' quarters as he would often be on duty early in the morning or at night: A regimental quartermaster was one of the few battalion officers who had a demanding job.
By June 1908, the Sweets were living on Lacey Terrace (now the east end of Clarence Place), in Gravesend, after the War Office moved 1st/DCLI there from Woolwich. Their home was in one of five, identical, semi-detached houses built by real estate developer Edward Lacey. The 2022 photograph on the right is of one of those houses. It was in his Gravesend home where Harry Sweet died.
Upon her husband's death, Ada qualified for the miserly, army widow's pension. Her's totalled £70 annually: £40 to support herself, £10 for each son under age 18, daughter under age 21. As army survivor benefits were poor, married officers without personal fortunes typically purchased life insurance. Harry, as a responsible husband and father, undoubtedly took out such insurance. He probably had purchased a £500 policy with an annual premium of £17. Harry's army pay as a newly commissioned quartermaster was £164 per annum. The £500 benefit could have purchased Ada a lifetime annuity of about £25 per year.
A Lacey House on Clarence Place
© 2023 Google
After Harry's death, Ada likely moved with her two youngest children, Richard and Norah, to the English Channel coast near Brighton. Frances, then aged 18, probably struck out on her own.
n/ Snell, Short History of the DCLI; Barlow Household Return, Census of England & Wales, 1901; War Office, Queen's Regulations and Orders for the Army, 1899, ¶1223; Monthly Army List, March 1903; Daily News (London), May 30, 1908; Peter Fishback, "Brian Tweedy: An Officer but not a Gentleman, James Joyce Quarterly 59, No. 4 (Summer 2022): 655-76; "Windmill Hill" on Gravesham Borough Council Website Discover Gravesham, www.discovergravesham.co.uk; War Office, Royal Warrant for the Pay of the Army, 1907, Arts. 201, 281 and §XI; Timothy Alborn, Regulated Lives Life Insurance and British Society 1800-1914 (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 2009), 130; UK Office for National Statistics, English Life Tables, No. 17.
In 1911, Frances was living in Maidstone, 50 kilometers southeast of central London. There, she was a nursing assistant at the 69-bed West Kent General Hospital. The hospital, that year, was staffed with two resident surgeons, 7 professional nurses ("nursing sisters), and 14 probationary nurses who had completed the three-year nursing course. Affiliated with the hospital were nine medical doctors and one dentist.
n/ Household Return, 25 Marsham St., Maidstone, Census of England & Wales, 1911; Burdett's Hospitals and Charities, 1912.
West Kent General Hospital Vicinity
Ordnance Survey 25" Map, 1910
Frances Mary Sweet
Maidstone, England c. 1912.
On Census Day, 1911, Frances resided in the West Kent General Hospital's nurses quarters located at 25 Marsham Street. By the outbreak of the First World War, these quarters had relocated to a larger facility at 42-48 Marsham Street, previously occupied by a culinary school. An army auxiliary hospital was soon co-located with the nurses and it was staffed primarily with Red Cross volunteers. As shown by the photograph on the left, Frances was gap-toothed and cockeyed.
We don't know when, where, or how Frances first met Edmund Arthur Sykes. Most likely, it was after he was commissioned and took place in late-1915 while he was on leave either in London or Brighton. Frances must have met him while off-duty or on holiday. Their relationship was developed fully by the time the army posted Edmund to France in the Summer of 1916: They had married in Brighton on August 19, 1916.
Edmund Sykes married Frances Sweet in Brighton's St. James parish church, CoE. The witnesses were Frances' mother Ada, sister Norah, and Frederick Rayden, a merchant and widower who would marry Ada the following month.* As shown by a truncated family tree (click here and a pdf file from this website will open in a pop-up window), Frances was well beneath Edmund in social standing. Accordingly, his very establishment parents would have objected strongly to their marriage if they had known about it.
Frances and Edmund understood fully the implications of the great disparity in their class standing. Accordingly, on the marriage license they gave Frances' deceased father's former position as captain with the 1st/DCLI (his actual rank was equivalent to first-lieutenant). The officiating clergyman, and any reader of the marriage certificate, would have presumed that Frances was a gentleman's daughter. Note that in the pre-war army, the War Office involuntarily retired at age 45 combatant officers who had not reached the rank of major (which was common in the infantry where there were few promotion opportunities).
* In 1920, Frederick and Ada emigrated from England to settle in China. Frederick Rayden had spent many years in Shanghai as a merchant and it was there, in 1895, he married Sussana Allen, a merchant's daughter. Two months before Frederick and Ada departed England, Frances' brother Richard married one of Frederick Rayden's daughters, Lucy. Ada and Frederick would live-out their last years in South Africa. United Kingdom Outgoing Passenger Lists, 1890-1960; British Armed Forces and Overseas Vital Records, Marriages, 1895; England & Wales Marriage Registrations, Godstone, 1920; Death Certificates, Cape Province, South Africa - Frederick Rayden, 1960, Ada (Roberts) Rayden, 1962.
n/ Census of England & Wales, 1911; Howard de Walden Auxiliary Hospital, Wartimes Memories Project, www.wartimesmemoriesproject.com; England & Wales Marriage Registrations, Brighton, 1916; Burke's Peerage, 1909; War Office, Royal Warrant for the Pay, Appointment, Promotion, and Non-Effective Pay of the Army, 1907, Art. 509.
Mr. & Mrs. Edmund Sykes, 1916-1922
When Edmund married Frances, he rented a 9-room house near the village of Wisborough Green for the couple's home. It was known first as "The Park," then "The Woodlands," and finally, "Ingrams." The village is 25 kilometers south of Guildford; 60 kilometers southwest of central London. In January 1918, their first child was born. Frances gave birth to Norah Cecilia in Wareham, Dorset located 17 kilometers west of Bournemouth. Her parents named her after Frances' sister and Edmund's mother. Most likely the pregnant Frances had moved in with her mother, then Mrs. Frederick Rayden, who was living in Wareham at the time.
Edmund, while in the army, would stay with Frances while he was on leave and after is discharge in January 1919, he returned to Wisborough. Sometime in 1920, Edmund formed a partnership with Philip E. Beavis and Edward William Paul to raise chickens for sale and maintain egg-laying hens. The partners acquired a farm near Merrow and did business under the name "Wingate's Poultry Farm." Beavis and Paul lived at Wingates and operated the business; Edmund may have been only an investor; however, as Wingate's was only an hour's drive by motor-car from Wisborough, he could have been involved in the business. During the time Edmund was involved in the poultry business, he had informed his family of his marriage as Frances was at Firfield in March 1920. Claud's mother, Cecilia, accepted her grand-daughter Norah Cecilia as part of the family, but apparently not Frances. Her will granted to Norah a pearl and diamond brooch plus a sapphire ring. Nothing went to Edmund's ex-wife Frances, but Philip's wife received jewelry, furniture, and furnishings, and Claud's a pearl ring.
Sometime in late-1918, while Edmund was away with the army, Frances began an affair with her brother-in-law Philip Arthur Sykes. In November and December 1918, she met with Philip, stationed in England with the Denbighshire Hussars, in Epsom, 40 kilometers northeast of Wisborough. There, they stayed at Fairview House on Alexandra Road. After she began her sexual relationship with Philip, she visited her old friend from Gravesend, William Arthur Thomas Stapley. They apparently had a tryst at Kennels Farm Cottage, Tixall, Staffordshire, 70 kilometers south of Manchester where Stapley resided. (For more on Stapley, click here and a pdf from this website will open in a popup window.) Edmund learned of his wife's infidelities and on September 10, 1920, petitioned the High Court for divorce naming his brother Arthur and William Stapley as co-respondents. At the time, Frances was 6-months-pregnant and Edmund moved out of the Wisborough house. Philip then took up residence with Frances.
In December 1920, Frances gave birth to a boy and named him Philip Richard, after Philip Sykes and her brother. Frances may have chosen the name Philip to indicate that Philip Sykes was the father, or because at the time she was living with him, or just to enrage her now estranged husband, Edmund.
At the time the divorce became effective, Frances' mother Ada and her husband travelled from China to visit Frances. When they left for China in September 1922, accompanying them were Frances' sister Norah and Frederick's youngest child, 14-year-old Dorothy Rayden. Frances left Wisborough Green for the Manchester suburb of Chorlton where she married William Stapley.
n/ Sykes Household Return, Census of England & Wales, 1921; Army Service Record of Edmund A. Sykes, UK National Archives, WO 339/57132; Divorce Petition, Sykes v. Sykes, Sykes, & Shapley, UK National Archives J 77/1704/3045; England & Wales Birth Registrations, Wareham, 1918; Surrey Mirror, December 17, 1920; Surrey Advertiser, July 9, 1921; Will of Cecilia Sykes, October 2, 1934; England & Wales Birth Registrations, Petworth, 1921; United Kingdom Outgoing Passenger Lists, 1890-1960; England & Wales Marriage Registrations, Chorlton, 1922.
Claud Sykes: Major Tweedy and Molly of Ulysses
Claud Sykes, who lived with his wife in Zurich from October 1915 through February 1920, probably had no idea what was going on among Edmund, Philip, and Frances during the war years. Presumably, he knew from family letters that Edmund had obtained an officer's commission, served in France and the Balkans, and was invalided home from both theaters of war. When Edmund sued for divorce in September 1920, Claud Sykes, then living with his wife in Manchester, certainly learned from his family about his brothers' scandalous behavior.
When James Joyce conceived the character Major Brian Cooper Tweedy, he had modelled him on a retired army officer known to his family: Malachi Powell. Powell, an Irish combat veteran of the Crimean War who was an enlisted cavalry trooper whom in 1856, the War Office commissioned a second-lieutenant of the newly-formed Land Transport Corps. After the war ended, the War Office reorganized and renamed the Land Transport Corps and on March 10, 1857, commissioned Lt. Powell a ridingmaster of the Military Train. Like quartermasters, all ridingmasters were former long-serving, enlisted men. Powell, while an officer, married a Catholic Englishwoman and the couple had eight children. Four of those children, all girls, appear as characters in Ulysses, most notably Louisa as Mrs. Joe Gallagher. In 1884, Louisa married Joseph Gallaher, a reporter for the Freeman's Journal, and the couple took up residence at 30 Castlewood Avenue, Rathmines. Joseph likely decided to live there as his older brother Frederick lived with his family at 13 Castlewood Avenue. From 1884 through 1887, John Joyce, his wife May, and their three infant children (James, Margaret, and Stanislaus), lived directly opposite Frederick Powell at 23 Castlewood Avenue.
Belgrave Square Area, Rathmines
Ordnance Survey of Ireland, 25" Map, 3rd Ed.
The Joyce family apparently knew another Powell, Charles. In 1901, this son of Major Powell married Mary Josephine Gallagher, daughter of William Gallagher who also appears in Ulysses. At the time, Gallagher was a shopkeeper who lived on Richmond Street North (where the Joyces lived 1896-1897) and did business at 4 North Strand Road.
James Joyce's parents were not his only family members who knew the Powells. His aunt through marriage, Josephine Murray, also knew them. That Joyce knew of the Powell family before he wrote Ulysses is evidenced by a letter he sent to his Aunt Jospehine in October 1921, in which he wrote
"... I want all the information, gossip or anything you remember about the Powells - chiefly the mother and daughters. Were any of them born abroad? When did Mrs Powell die? I never heard of a third brother, only Gus and Charley. The women were Mrs Gallaher, Mrs Clinch, Mrs Russell. Where did they live before marriage? When did the major, if that was his rank, die? ..."
The Mrs. Russell mentioned by Joyce was Agnes, the youngest of the four Powell daughters (Letitia, Louisa, Mary, and Agnes).
n/ "… Major Powell - in my book Major Tweedy …", Letter, James Joyce to Mrs. William Murray, December 21, 1922, Letters of James Joyce, Vol. 1, Stuart Gilbert, ed. (New York: Viking, 1957); Andrew Tierney, " 'One of Britain’s fighting men': Major Malachi Powell and Ulysses," James Joyce Online Notes, No. 6 (December 2013), www.jjon.org; London Gazette - March 18, 1856, March 10, 1857; Thom's Directory, 1886; Danis Rose, "Solider than Most: John Joyce's House in North Richmond Street," James Joyce Quarterly 31, No. 2 (Winter 1994): 105-11; U (Gabler) 10: 84-87; Gallagher Household Return, Census of Ireland, 1901; Thom's Directory, 1904.
While living in Zurich, Joyce had constructed the prototype for Molly Bloom. At the end of 1918, or very early in 1919, Joyce revised his first draft of the Ulysses' "Sirens" episode. That episode would appear in the August and September 1919 issues of The Little Review as part of a serialized version of the early Ulysses. At first, Joyce planned to name Major Tweedy's daughter after Malachi Powell's third daughter, Mary; however, by the Spring of 1919, Joyce had renamed Tweedy's daughter Marion.
James Joyce Collection, NLI, MS 36,639, Notebooks 7A, 9.
The "My Irish Molly O" that appears in the 2nd Draft, was a 1905 American song that became wildly popular among London's variety performers. It was created by William Jerome Flannery (lyrics) and Jean Schwartz (music). The handwriting following the song title and preceding "used" is somewhat illegible and appears to be the abbreviation "f o o."
In 1891, Mary Powell had married Michael Clinch and a Mrs. Clinch appears in Ulysses as a woman Leopold Bloom mistakenly took for a prostitute.
n/ James Joyce Collection, National Library of Ireland, MS 36,639 - Notebook 7A, p.16, Notebook 9, p.8; Tierney, "One of Britain's fighting men;" St. Kevin's Church, Dublin, Marriage Records 1865-1912, p. 165; U (Gabler) 13:866-67; Letter, James Joyce to Mrs. William Murray, October 14, 1921, Letters of James Joyce, Vol. 1, Gilbert, ed.; Historic Sheet Music Collection, Library of Congress Catalog Entry; Hull Daily Mail, December 28, 1905.
After Sykes left Switzerland in March 1920, he and James Joyce remained in contact by correspondence. In September 1920, the Sykes visited the Joyces in Paris. It's feasible that there, Sykes told Joyce about his twin brothers' problem concerning Frances. From then until the end of January 1921, Joyce worked on Ulysses' completion and developed the character we know today as Marion ("Molly") Bloom.
There is a similarity between the historic father-daughter pair Harry/Frances Sweet and the fictional Brian/Marion Tweedy: Frances and Marion (Molly) were both born abroad to fathers who were ex-ranker army officers. This leads one to speculate how much input Claud Sykes had in Joyce's creation of Molly Bloom. Joyce began to write "Penelope" in mid-1921 and completed it in September. The following month, Joyce sent the Ulysses' manuscript to the printer. After that, he worked furiously to revise the book which went through multiple galley proofs. This work went on until a few days before the publication of Ulysses. By then, Claud Sykes knew fully of Frances Sweet and during the period Joyce completed Ulysses, Sykes was in touch with Joyce.
n/ Letter from Joyce to Budgen, August 16, 1921, Selected Joyce Letters, Richard Ellmann, ed. (New York: Viking, 1975); Letter from Joyce to Larbaud, September 24, 1921, Letters of James Joyce, Vol. 3, Richard Ellmann, ed. (New York: Viking, 1966); Herbert Gorman, James Joyce (New York: Rinehart, 1939), 284-86;
Following is a list of the known correspondence between James Joyce and Claud Sykes for the period March 1920 through January 1922. We don't know anything about the letters Sykes sent to Joyce, nor of any other correspondence between the two.
Extant Correspondence, Joyce & Sykes, 1920 & 1921
Date | From | To | Subject | Source |
October 11, 1920 | Joyce | Sykes | Notes that he's working on "Circe." Other literary matters. | LLJ III |
Early 1921 | Joyce | Sykes | A thank-you note for a letter received. | LLJ I |
Spring 1921 | Joyce | Sykes | Difficulties in getting the "Circe" manuscript typed. Progress on Ulysses and publication plans. Comment on "little theatres" and return of "Circe" and "Eumaeus" type-scripts reviewed by Sykes. | LLJ I |
June 6, 1921 | Joyce | Sykes | Asked if he sent the type-script received in Paris (episode not identified). | LLJ III |
Sources: LJJ I - Letters of James Joyce, Vol. 1, Gilbert, ed.; LJJ III - Letters of James Joyce, Vol. 3, Ellmann, ed.
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