The Little Review March 1918

This March 1918 copy of The Little Review, containing first appearance in print of opening of Ulysses, was given to the Tower by Richard M Kain in 1962.

Joyce started work on Ulysses in 1914. Thanks to the help of Ezra Pound, it was serially published in the Chicago Little Review between 1918 and 1920. It met with scandal and controversy. In Feb 1921, the publishers Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap faced obscenity charges for publishing a section of Nausica and were each fined $50. According to the New York Times, the main objection was “too frank expression concerning women’s dress when the woman was in the clothes described”.

Joyce would go on to include an oblique reference to the finding in Ithaca episode: “compassion for Nelly Bouverist’s non-intellectual, non-political, non-topical expression of countenance and concupiscence caused by Nelly Bouverist’s revelations of white articles of non-intellectual, non-political, non-topical underclothing while she (Nelly Bouverist) was in the articles”.