Customer Reviews

Selected Letters

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Unbelieveable. There is no doubting that James Joyce was one of the twentieth century's greatest writers. His contribution to modern literature is still being felt 60 years after his death. And, yet, his letters, which are as close as we will ever get to knowing what he was thinking while composing his great works, are no longer available in print?

Thank God I purchased this book years ago! Richard Ellmann had done a tremendous job of sorting and compiling Joyce's letters in a way that shows us Joyce's thinking as he put together "Dubliners", "Exiles", "Stephen Hero", "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man", "Ulysses", and "Finnegan's Wake". While some (back when the book first came out) questioned the extremely private/sexual communications that Ellmann included, no one doubted the importance of all the other selected letters. This is a remarkable look into the mind of a great writer, and I hope some publisher will pick it up and reprint it. In the meanwhile, try to get a used copy through Amazon.

This book contains a suite of new letters to Joyce's wife Nora and another to his benefactress Harriet Weaver, which have been abridged or excluded from previous editions. The explicit nature of these love letters makes them unlike anything you have read before. This book delivers the full Joyce - unabridged and uncensored.