Exiles: A Play in Three Acts

EXILES: A PLAY IN THREE ACTS, James Joyce. (London: Egoist Press, 1921). The second English edition of Exiles, published The Egoist Press from newly set type (first edition, thus), incorporating corrections from the Grant Richards and BW Huebsch first editions. One of only 500 bound copies in an issue of 1,000 sheets (with the remaining sets of sheets handed over to Jonathan Cape in 1924). Bound in dark green cloth over boards, blind-stamped on cover and gilt stamped on spine. A Very Good+ copy of a rare edition. No dust jacket. Spine slightly tanned and gilt rubbed; slight fraying to crown.

Joyce's only work for theatre, written between the spring 1914 and autumn 1915, was first published in 1918 in simultaneous editions by Grant Richards (London) and BW Huebsch (New York). In the interim, Joyce, with help of Ezra Pound, sought but failed to arrange a performance of the play. Its first production was in German translation (Verbannte) in Munich in 1919; its first performance in English was at The Neighborhood Playhouse of New York in February 1925.

Though short-lived, The Egoist Press had a significant impact on modernist letters, as did its proprietor and founder, Harriet Shaw Weaver. Not only did Weaver support and publish Joyce, but her Egoist Press issued first editions of Tarr by Wyndham Lewis, Prufrock by T.S. Eliot, and Quia Pauper Amavi by Ezra Pound, in addition to bringing the works of H.D., Robert McAlmon, Dora Marsden, Richard Aldington, and Marianne Moore to the English public, often for the first time.