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Ulysses in the Marketplace: 1932

Eighty years ago, on February 2, 1932, Joyce marked his fiftieth birthday and the tenth anniversary of the publication of the first edition of Ulysses. This turned out to be a decisive year in Joyce’s life and in the history of his most famous and bestselling work. In August, Sylvia Beach sold the last copy of her Shakespeare and Company edition, thereby marking another decisive juncture in the trajectory of Joyce’s work and in the history of her publishing house and shop. Then the Odyssey Press, an ad hoc imprint of the Albatross Press, issued a new, much lower-priced, continental edition of Ulysses at the start of 1933 that sold more than twice as many copies in its first year as Shakespeare and Company had ever sold in any two-year period. Notable as they are, these figures elide the complex and dynamic forces that shaped the material production and consumption of one of modernism’s most emblematic works of art. By scrutinizing the relatively complete archival record of these various negotiations that survive, this article analyzes previously little-known aspects of the often conflicting strategies that motivated the author, his agents, as well as the various international publishers who vied to add this iconic and lucrative title to their lists in 1932. Although focused on just one critical year, this article clarifies the legal and financial decisions that determined the long-term commercial success of Ulysses. It thereby dispels some persistent misconceptions and myths and should encourage further inquiry and debate about these crucial aspects of modernist studies. In the midst of Joyce’s continuing concerns about his own ill health, he was still grieving his father’s death at the start of 1932 when his first