(Il)legal Deposits: Ulysses and the Copyright Libraries

摘要

ALMOST EVERY ASPECT OF THE PUBLICATION HISTORY of James Joyce's Ulysses (1922) has been subjected to scrutiny by literary critics, bibliographers, and book historians. However, one facet of what might be termed the institutional history of Ulysses has yet to receive any scholarly attention: its accession in the closing months of 1922 into the holdings of the United Kingdom's six copyright libraries. Despite a concerted campaign by the Home Office, Post Office, Police, and Customs Authorities of Great Britain to suppress the novel, between November and December 1922 copies of the Egoist Press impression of Ulysses (published that October) were accepted and shelved under legal deposit by the British Museum, the Bodleian Library in Oxford, Cambridge University Library, the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh, the National Library of Wales, and Trinity College, Dublin. This article offers a detailed account of when and how these accessions were made, and what they reveal about the marketing, circulation, and readership of Joyce's novel in the United Kingdom prior to its availability in a mass-market edition.