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Manuscripts and correspondence make up the bulk of the James Joyce Collection, 1899-1968.
Part of the collection comprises original Joyce material, but most of the collection
is
material about Joyce, including research and criticism. The material, therefore, is
organized into two series: I. James Joyce Writings and Correspondence, 1899-1958 (4.8
boxes), and II. Materials About Joyce and His Works, 1902-1968 (6.2 boxes). This collection
was previously accessible only through a card catalog, but has been re-cataloged as
part of
a retrospective conversion project. |
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Series I. is divided into three subseries. Subseries A. Works, consists of holograph
drafts, typescripts, page proofs, printed pages, notes, and fragments of novels, poems,
song
lyrics, musical scores, limericks, and translations by Joyce. The Ransom Center has
the
complete and final first edition page proofs for Ulysses (1922), with the author's corrections and additions, as well
as a typescript for the Ithaca episode, and page proofs of a translation into French
by
Auguste Morel. In the collection also are page proofs for Finnegans Wake (1939), including "Continuation of a Work in Progress," and "Tales Told of Shem and Shaun," and holograph drafts for Pomes Penyeach (1927), as well as other poems. Joyce provided the
musical score for "Dark Rosaleen," and the text, from Finnegans Wake, for the musicals "May Song It Flourish" and "The Riverrun," and manuscripts for these works are present. A
holograph draft of his translation into Italian of Riders to the Sea (1905) by J. M. Synge, is included here as
well. |
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Subseries B. Correspondence, consists principally of letters regarding Joyce's literary
work. Outgoing letters by Joyce were written to his London publisher Elkin Mathews,
and
Swiss publisher Daniel Brody; to editor Padraic Colum; to literary friends Richard
Aldington, John Byrne, Edouard Dujardin, and Livia Veneziani Schmitz; to Irish tenor
John
Sullivan; to his Zurich pupil, Victor Sax; to his daughter Lucia Joyce, and to his
aunt
Josephine Murray. Incoming correspondence to Joyce amounts to three letters, from
Maria
Jolas, Al Laney, and G. Herbert Thring. |
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Subseries C. Personal Papers, consists of personal items relating to Joyce such as
items
withdrawn from books in his Trieste library, a receipt to him for the Swedish translation
of
The Dubliners (1931), two memoranda of agreement with Albatross
Verlag and one with The Egoist, Ltd., and a report regarding an operation on Joyce's
left
eye by Dr. Alfred Vogt. |
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Series II. Materials About Joyce and His Works, consists of correspondence and manuscripts
principally pertaining to Joyce. There are holograph drafts, typescripts, and galley
proofs
of James Joyce and the Making of Ulysses (1960), by Frank Budgen, as
well as drafts of "James Joyce's Work in Progress and Old Norse
Poetry,""Joyce's chapters of Going Forth by Day,""My Friend James Joyce," and "Further recollections of James Joyce." |
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John Francis Byrne is represented in this section with five holograph notebooks and
galley
proofs for his memoir Silent Years (1953), an address given at Cornell
University in 1959, as well as numerous articles and a review of Richard Ellmann's
James Joyce. Included also are four reviews of Silent Years, by Herbert Cahoon, Kuna Dolch, Richard Ellmann, and W.
B. Ready. The extensive Byrne correspondence principally concerns Silent Years. Incoming letters to Byrne are from Robert Adams (of
Cornell University), Sylvia Beach, Isabel MacGarry Crotty (an old friend), Richard
Ellmann,
Robert Giroux (of Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc.), John Stanislaus Joyce, Lucia
Joyce,
and from several friends. There are also letters from Farrar, Straus & Young, Inc.,
and
from authors Vivian Mercier, Francis and Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington, and Mabel Worthington,
among others. |
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A typescript of a speech by Richard Ellmann, "James Joyce, Irish European," is here, as well as writings by Stuart
Gilbert such as a biographical sketch on Joyce for the Dictionary of National Biography, page proofs for his James Joyce's Ulysses (1930), and a small folder of Joyceana. There
are galley proofs for a review copy of My Brother's Keeper: James Joyce's Early
Years (1958) by Stanislaus Joyce; numerous articles about Joyce or his writings by
James Findlay Hendry, Helen Joyce, Lucie Leon, Josiah Mitchell Morse, Joseph Prescott,
and
Derek S. Savage, among others; transcriptions of radio broadcasts for the B.B.C. on
Joyce by
W. R. Rodgers and James Stephens; and musical scores for "The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo" and "May Song It Flourish" by J. Willard Roosevelt. In addition to these
writings referring to Joyce are several political articles by Francis and Hanna
Sheehy-Skeffington. |
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In addition to the letters already mentioned in this Series are letters from Byrne's
wife,
Gertrude, as well as letters from Sylvia Beach, Stuart Gilbert, Harriet Weaver, Edward
Titus, Herbert Thring, and others. |
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For further information see Joyce at Texas: Essays on the James
Joyce Materials at the Humanities Research Center by Dave Oliphant and Thomas
Zigal, Austin, 1983, a complete issue of The Library Chronicle devoted to
James Joyce. For information on the Trieste library see Catalogue of James Joyce's Trieste Library by Michael Gillespie,
Austin, 1986. A published facsimile of the page proofs of Ulysses is available for patron use. |