Bidspirit auction | [JOYCE JAMES]: (1882-1941)

[JOYCE JAMES]: (1882-1941) - [JOYCE JAMES]: (1882-1941) Irish novelist and poet. An interesting piece of printed ephemera, being Number 40 of the second year of Les Amis de 1914, Bulletin Hebdomadaire de l’Académie de la Coupole , published by François Bernouard, Paris, 23rd February 1934, the single printed sheet folded twice to form eight 8vo pages. The front page is devoted to Joyce's The Mime of Mick, Nick and the Maggies and prints a short pre-publication extract from his Work in Progress , commencing ´Loud, hear us! Loud, graciously hear us! Now have thy children entered into their habitations…´ and concluding ´Ha he hi ho hu. Mummum´ , with Joyce's name in type beneath. The extract would subsequently form part of Finnegans Wake (1939). The inside pages prominently announce a reception in honour of Joyce at 9pm on 23rd February, at which Reginald Fellowes, Léon-Paul Fargue, Edouard Dujardin, Valéry Larbaud and Louis Gillet would ´Recevront Monsieur James Joyce´ followed by a commemoration of the English First World War poet Rupert Brooke , at which Gabriel Boissy would speak in his memory and Rachel Berendt would recite English and French texts. The issue also includes a tribute by Gérard Bauër to Jean-Louis Vaudoyer and a speech by André Fontainas delivered at the reception of Paul Fort, and advertises forthcoming events involving André Maurois, Jane Bathori, Jean Wiéner, Léo-Pol Morin and Jacques Ibert. Some very light, extremely minor age wear, VG An uncommon and desirable piece of Joyce ephemera containing a pre-publication appearance of a passage from Work in Progress, the vast experimental undertaking eventually published as Finnegans Wake in 1939. Bibliographically recorded as Slocum & Cahoon C91, the extract corresponds to the concluding paragraphs of Part II, Chapter I of Finnegans Wake (pp. 258-59). Later in 1934 a considerably more extensive version appeared as The Mime of Mick, Nick and the Maggies: A Fragment from Work in Progress, privately printed in a limited edition by the Servire Press at The Hague. The present issue was published to coincide with a reception in Joyce's honour organised by the Amis de 1914 on 23rd February 1934 at the Académie de la Coupole, Boulevard du Montparnasse. The occasion brought together several figures closely associated with Joyce and the reception of his work in France, most notably Edouard Dujardin, whose pioneering use of the interior monologue influenced Joyce's narrative technique, and Valéry Larbaud, one of the earliest and most influential French champions of Ulysses. The event attracted contemporary attention and was reported the following day by Les Nouvelles littéraires under the heading Joyce à la Coupole. The evening's programme also commemorated Rupert Brooke (1887-1915), the celebrated English poet whose idealistic war sonnets, and premature death from illness while serving with the Royal Naval Division in 1915, made him one of the emblematic literary figures of the First World War. Les Amis de 1914 was the weekly bulletin associated with the Académie de la Coupole and was published by the distinguished French typographer and publisher François Bernouard. Its appearance of Joyce's text immediately alongside the announcement of the reception provides an attractive contemporary record of the author's prominent position within Parisian literary circles during the prolonged composition of Finnegans Wake.