Dubliners

James Joyce was not averse to advertising his books like the commodities they are. One of Joyce's more bizarre stratagems was his idea to include a preface in the first edition of Dubliners, to be entitled "A Curious History," relating his difficulties getting the book published. He seemed to believe that an account of these injustices would create a "notable affect [sic]" (Letters 2:329) and thereby act as an advertisement for the collection. When Grant Richards finally published the book in 1914, he mercifully omitted the preface, which has, thus far, appeared only in fragmented form in Joyce's published Letters (2:291-93; 324-25). But with the lapsing of the copyright on the first edition of Dubliners, editions of the text have proliferated like espresso bars in Seattle.(1) In three editions the suppressed preface has been printed in full, so that Joyce scholars can now read and interpret this metatext for themselves.(2) Some Joyceans may, like the boy narrator of "Araby," perceive this wealth of reprints as a "splendid bazaar" (Vintage D 23), full of attractive goods calling out for purchase. However, the professor merely seeking a good classroom text for undergraduates may be as confused as the youthful shopper of "Araby" when confronted with a heap of nearly identical goods selling at different prices. Looking for the best bargain but lacking the time to wade through all the editions, the intrepid professor may bum with "anguish and anger" (Vintage D 27) before finally giving up and staying with the most familiar version. This, however, would be a mistake: although many of the editions offer the same text, each possesses a unique set of strengths and weaknesses. Moreover, the Dubliners edited by Hans Walter Gabler et al. -- available in both the Vintage paperback and in the Garland critical edition -- constitutes a new text that more closely resembles the book Joyce wrote than any version we have previously seen.

A Curious History

The complex textual history of Dubliners is largely a result of the difficulties Joyce encountered in getting the book published. He first submitted his book of (then) 12 stories to Grant Richards in late 1905. Richards agreed to publish the book, and Joyce added a thirteenth story ("Two Gallants") in early 1906. Unfortunately, the printer chose to typeset this story first; liable under English law for prosecution, he refused to print what he perceived as obscenity. Spooked, Richards asked the young author to omit that story, and "An Encounter" -- and to delete offensive words in "Counterparts." Joyce refused, and the book was withdrawn. After numerous other rejections, in 1909 the Dublin firm of Maunsel & Company accepted the (now 15-story) collection. But this time the publisher, George Roberts, got cold feet about a passage concerning the late King Edward VII in "Ivy Day in the Committee Room"; after much legal wrangling and angry correspondence (Joyce, with marvelous chutzpah, actually wrote to King George V to ask if he found the "Ivy Day" passages objectionable), Maunsel destroyed the copies that had been set up.(3)

Although it was never published, the Maunsel edition went through three stages of proof, each of which survives in fragments. When Richards reconsidered and agreed in early 1914 to publish the collection, an early stage of the Maunsel page proofs (a copy of which Joyce had secured) became the copy-text for the first edition. Thus when Joyce read proof on the Richards edition, he reintroduced some of the changes he had made on a later-stage of the Maunsel proofs; but, since he did not have a copy of them at hand, he neglected to incorporate into the first edition 26 other changes he had made to those proofs. In addition, Richards's printer ignored both a list of 200 corrections that Joyce had sent, and another fist of 30 misprints that Joyce had sent separately.(4) Thus the first edition has come down to us as a corrupt text, not only because it did not incorporate more than 200 changes that Joyce expressly desired -- including the use of dashes instead of quotation marks for dialogue -- but also because it is based upon an early stage of the Maunsel proofs that lacks those 26 other changes Joyce made to the late-stage Maunsel proofs. As Gabler notes, the late-stage Maunsel proofs, therefore, represent the Dubliners stories "most close and consistently under [Joyce's] control" (Garland edition 22; Vintage 232). When Robert Scholes prepared the 1967 Viking edition of Dubliners, he restored most of the changes made on the late Maunsel proofs, as well as the corrections Joyce provided in his two lists. Superseding the flawed first edition, the Viking edition has rightfully stood as the preferred text for almost 30 years.

Clay

The impatient reader may be thinking, "So what? Even with quotation marks, the stories are still Joyce. My eyes glaze over when anyone starts talking about textual editing, and my students couldn't care less about such details." If you share these sentiments (and I hope that you don't, since in one case the change of a single letter alters the meaning of a story), two inexpensive paperbacks based on the first edition might suit your needs. Easily the cheapest Dubliners available is the Dover Thrift edition, which offers a no-frills printing of the first edition preceded by a two-paragraph "note" -- all for only a buck. If you assign this text, your students will love you -- all that extra money for noshing and moshing! Only slightly more expensive ($3.95) is the Bantam Classic edition, which provides a decent introduction by Brenda Maddox covering Joyce's fife, the publishing history of the collection and Joyce's reputation as a stylist. If Maddox's discussion of epiphany seems reductive,(5) and her claim that at the end of "The Dead" Joyce "leaves his country in the graveyard" (xxi) is a touch misleading, these flaws do little harm. But the reader may stop short when, after reading Maddox's paragraph describing Joyce's abhorrence of quotation marks, he or she discovers that the text actually uses those despised marks. Forced to add an "author's note," Maddox essentially disowns the edition she has just introduced.(6) My advice: ignore this edition. The Dover Thrift edition is cheaper, and all the other editions (except one) provide more accurate texts.