THE HOLY OFFICE [caption title] de Joyce, James - 1905

[Pola, Yugoslavia: Privately Printed for the Author, 1905. Quarto broadsheet (288 x 220 mm). Printed in double columns on recto only. Small rust marks in top margin above title, upper left corner slightly creased and dust -shaded, pencil tip-size chip from extreme lower right corner, but a very good copy. First available printing of James Joyce's second separate publication, preceded by the chimerical [ET TU, HEALY!], privately printed for Joyce's father in 1891 or 1892, of which no copies are known. According to Stanislaus Joyce, his brother commissioned a broadside printing of this poem in Dublin, but due to a shortage of funds was unable to take possession of the edition. It was presumably destroyed by the printer as no copy of that printing has been traced. Because of an "insolent" letter he received from the printer about the matter, when he had the funds Joyce elected to have this fresh printing made in Pola, where he was resident from November 1904 through March of the following year. Slocum and Cahoon suggest the edition consisted of "probably less than 100" copies, which Joyce distributed by mail, and through the efforts of Stanislaus and friends. SLOCUM & CAHOON A2.