A First Foray Into The National Library

Crispi: ‘First Foray’ GJS 11
A First Foray into the National Library of Ireland’s Joyce Manuscripts:

Bloomsday 2011
Luca Crispi
This essay and guide is the first part of several longer and more complete studies that I
currently have underway.1 It opens with a General Survey of Joyce’s Ulysses
Manuscripts, which is a non-technical, summary overview of the various ways in which
Joyce used different kinds of manuscripts to write Ulysses.2 The general survey is a
preamble to the eleven sections that follow; these are more specialised, partial
introductions to about half of the NLI’s ‘Joyce Papers 2002’.3 Finally, I have compiled a
Census of the Extant Ulysses Holograph Manuscripts that appears here as an appendix.
This opening foray into the NLI’s collection of Joyce manuscripts includes his
juvenilia, but the principal focus here is on the Ulysses draft manuscripts that Joyce wrote
from 1917 to 1919, as well as all of the newly discovered Ulysses notebooks that he
compiled in 1917 and then in 1921. This initial critical examination of the documents is
part of my continuing effort to catalogue as well as establish digital and print editions in
accordance with copyright. This kind of analysis is fundamental to subsequent
interpretive work on the genesis of Ulysses. The following manuscripts are dealt with
here in varying degrees of comprehensiveness and detail:
Manuscript Name: NLI MS Number:

Notes on Dante and Italian Vocabulary: 1897–8 MS 36,639/01
Early Commonplace Book: 1903–12 MS 36,639/02/A
Early Ulysses ‘Subject Notebook for Drafts: 1917 MS 36,639/03
I. Later Ulysses Notebook: February–May 1921 MS 36,639/04
II. Later Ulysses Notebook: February–May 1921 MS 36,639/05/A
III. Later Ulysses Notebook: January–February 1921 MS 36,639/05/B
Earlier Typescript Schema for Ulysses: November 1921 MS 36,639/06
Earlier Partial Drafts of ‘Proteus’ and ‘Sirens’ and Notes: MSS 36,639/07/A–B
1917
Complete Earlier Draft of ‘Scylla and Charybdis’: 1918 MSS 36,639/08/A–C
Partial Later Draft of ‘Sirens’: 1919 MS 36,639/09
Scenes and Fragmentary Tests for ‘Cyclops’: June 1919 MS 36,639/10
1
I would like to thank Dirk Van Hulle, Geert Lernout, Hans Walter Gabler, Ronan
Crowley, Terence Killeen, and Daniel Ferrer for their insightful comments and
suggestions.
2
I wrote a previous version of this survey to accompany the ‘Ulysses in Process’
installation in the ‘James Joyce and Ulysses at the National Library of Ireland’ exhibition
(Dublin, June 2004–March 2006), which I curated with Catherine Fahy and Katherine
McSharry.
3
The ‘Joyce Papers 2002’ are NLI MSS 36,639/01–19 and this study covers MSS
36,639/01–10. Peter Kenny prepared an initial catalogue of all the ‘Joyce Papers 2002’
and it is available online at www.nli.ie. I am preparing a revised, complete catalogue of
the Joyce manuscripts at the NLI.
1
This first piece ends with Joyce’s work on the NLI’s proto-draft of ‘Cyclops’ in 1919
because it is one of several pivotal junctures in the development of Ulysses. This
transitional period remains a significant turning point in the transformation of the novel,
even though we now know that what Michael Groden designated as the ‘middle stage’ is
actually composed of a series of much more complex and nuanced incremental phases.4
Similarly, the later phases of Ulysses in process are also better understood as a series of
gradated innovations rather than distinct breaks with what Joyce had already
accomplished.
Therefore, other studies will take up what follows: the two draft levels of the ‘Oxen
of the Sun’ manuscripts (NLI MSS 36,639/11/A–F); the two new NLI ‘Circe’
manuscripts (MS 36,639/12 and the so-called ‘Quinn draft’ of ‘Circe’ [MS 35,958]); the
earlier proto-draft of ‘Ithaca’ (MS 36,639/13); the complete, earlier draft of ‘Penelope’
(MS 36,639/14); as well as the NLI’s relatively disparate Finnegans Wake manuscripts
(MSS 36,639/15–19 and the ‘Joyce Papers 2006’ [MS 41,818], among others). Each of
these groupings of manuscripts require an individual in-depth analysis, in part due to their
complex inter-relationships with other manuscripts in the Poetry Collection, University at
Buffalo, the Rosenbach Museum and Library, the British Library, and elsewhere. I have
already catalogued all the related Buffalo manuscripts, and I will treat these other, later
NLI Joyce manuscripts in forthcoming publications.5
The focus on each of the manuscripts I discuss below is purposefully diverse and
eclectic; there are many other topics that need to be analysed and so this first foray is
meant to encourage further study and discussion. These particular analyses are concerned
with a range of specific (historical-material-textual) genetic issues that have a bearing on
our current understanding of Joyce’s compositional practices, specifically regarding his
work on Ulysses from 1917 to mid 1921—about which we know so much more from
these new manuscripts. For now the goal is to determine what this kind of information
can tell us about the state of Ulysses in 1917–19. The scholarly perspective here is
necessarily more bibliographical than my current (critical-interpretive) genetic work:
Becoming the Blooms: Joyce’s Art of Storytelling in ‘Ulysses’.
The various distinct instantiations of Ulysses are indeed fixed and at least
temporarily ‘finalised’ at each particular juncture in manuscript and in print. This is most
obviously the case when Ulysses appeared as a published work from March 1918 first in
parts and then as editions as well as further printings. Nonetheless, for at least some of
Joyce’s readers, the book as a product is intrinsically embedded in the creative process; in
fact, publication is only a momentarily distinguishable event in the process of genetic
readings.6 Therefore, to better understand what the text has come to mean as published,
the genetic critical endeavour involves disentangling the text’s many distinct versions
along the way.
4
See Michael Groden, ‘Ulysses’ in Progress, (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1977), pp. 115–65.
5
I completed the catalogue of the Buffalo Joyce Collection in September 2010 and it is
available online at http://library.buffalo.edu/pl/collections/jamesjoyce/catalog/.
6
See Jean-Michel’s Rabaté’s discussion of the ‘genreader’ in James Joyce and the
Politics of Egoism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
2
The descriptions and analyses below try to isolate the text of Ulysses at particular
points in time during the work’s seven-year evolution; this type of study permits readers
to discriminate between those features of the work that Joyce had already set in place and
those that were yet to come, without privileging the earlier ideas and texts over later ones.
In general, by focusing on the creative process of a text’s genesis, readers and critics can
avoid essentialising characterisations of what Ulysses is and thereby avoid succumbing to
the fallacy that the work we have in its published forms was something both timeless and
necessary.
Although the approach is variously defined and practiced,7 I maintain that a
methodical understanding of the historical, material, and textual aspects of Joyce’s
manuscripts is a necessary foundation for genetic criticism to be an effective tool in the
critical interpretation of his works. Genetic criticism is indeed founded on an assemblage
of the verifiable information that happens to be documented in the necessarily partial
material traces of a work’s evolution. Some literary critics still persist in marginalising
the ‘scientific’ aspect of genetic criticism at a time when historical and material textual
approaches have assumed once again a central position in Joyce studies and more
generally in modernist studies. Nonetheless, it is precisely these grounded approaches
that are the basis of the interpretive insights and hypotheses that a genetic-historicist
critic is able to put forward. Furthermore, while generally rigorous in terms of the
evidence it marshals, genetic criticism encourages rather than hinders a multiplicity of
perspectives and a broad range of readings and interpretations. In fact, one of its strengths
as a form of critical interpretation lies in its ability to destabilise seemingly categorical
statements based solely on the evidence of a singular, unitary, published text and the
monolithic critical conclusions it encourages.
An example here is the best way to illustrate these more abstract points. It was as
early as July 1918 that the first readers of Ulysses in The Little Review discovered some
details about Leopold Bloom’s father, Rudolph Virag, who changed his surname in
Ireland. The information is given in an oblique way in ‘Lotus Eaters’. Shortly after
collecting Martha Clifford’s letter at the Westland Row post office and a meandering
conversation with C.P. McCoy, Bloom sees an advert for Leah with Mrs Bandmann
Palmer and thinks:
Leah tonight: Mrs. Bandmann Palmer. Like to see her in that again. Poor papa!
How he used to talk about Kate Bateman in that! Outside the Adelphi in London
waited all the afternoon to get in. Year before I was born that was: sixtyfive. And
Ristori in Vienna. What is this the right name is? By Mosenthal it is. Rachel, is it?
No. The scene he was always talking about where the old blind Abraham
recognises the voice and puts his fingers on his face.
Nathan’s voice! His son’s voice! I hear the voice of Nathan who left his father to
die of grief and misery in my arms, who left the house of his father and left the God
of his father.
Every word is so deep, Leopold.
7
See Daniel Ferrer’s recently-published rich and provocative analysis of the potential of
genetic criticism: Logiques du brouillon: modelès pour une critique génétique (Paris:
Éditions du Seuil, 2011).
3
Poor papa! Poor man! I’m glad I didn’t go into the room to look at his face. That
day! O dear! O dear! Ffoo! Well, perhaps it was the best for him.
This is how the scene read in The Little Review (see U 5.194–209). As far as the fictional
biography of Leopold Bloom is concerned, the most important fact readers will glean
from this scene is the year of Bloom’s birth: 1866. As so often happens in Ulysses,
Bloom tends to date the events in his own life by correlating them with other personal
and historical events, though in this case the associations are partially erroneous. On the
one hand, the popular American actress Millicent Bandmann-Palmer did in fact play in
Leah the Forsaken at the Gaiety in Dublin the week of 16 June 1904. On the other hand,
Bloom recalls his father waiting to see Kate Bateman, another famous actress, in Leah in
the Adelphi theatre in London in 1865, the year before Bloom was born. Actually,
Bateman appeared in Leah at the Adelphi in October 1863, a fact that Joyce was most
likely aware of given all the other accurate historical details that structure this passage
and Ulysses more generally. This is just one instance when Joyce was willing to alter
historical details for the sake of the fictional histories of his characters.
Furthermore, once readers are able to piece together the story of Bloom’s father, the
play, which is based on Salomon Hermann Mosenthal’s Deborah, has obvious
resonances for the story of Rudolph Virag and Ulysses. Simply put: the play is about
Leah, the leader of a band of wandering Jews, who have fled from religious persecution
in Hungary. Along the way, they stop in an Austrian town where she falls in love with a
Catholic boy named Rudolf, but Rudolf’s father, Nathan, a converted Jew, eventually
breaks off the romance between the two lovers. It seems that the important facts readers
are to gather from this passage in ‘Lotus Eaters’ are: 1) this is the first time we are told
the year of Leopold Bloom’s birth; 2) the fact that Rudolph Virag was not yet in Dublin
in 1865, the year before Bloom was born; and 3) the thematic link between Rudolph
Virag Bloom’s life and the play, Leah.
But, as usual, when Joyce revised and amplified this passage, he did so more than
once. The first time was about three years later (in early 1921) when he added the
following bit of historical detail on the typescript for the publication of Ulysses:
Leah tonight. Mrs Bandmann Palmer. Like to see her again in that. ^Hamlet she
played last night. Male impersonator.^ Poor papa! […] (see U 5.194–7)
As well as having the leading role in Leah, Bandmann-Palmer did in fact also play
Hamlet at the Gaiety during the week of 16 June 1904, and so she was indeed a male
impersonator. It seems that here, at least initially, Joyce was primarily concerned with
adding further realistic historical details. But, then at the end of June 1921 (on the second
setting of this text in proofs), he made yet another addition to this scene. Among other
things, this subsequent addition further strengthens the work’s structural parallels to
Shakespeare’s works, but it also more overtly introduces the sombre issue of ‘death by
misadventure’ as it is called in the next episode (U 6.634):
Leah tonight. Mrs Bandmann Palmer. Like to see her again in that. Hamlet she
played last night. Male impersonator. ^Perhaps he was a woman. Why Ophelia
committed suicide.^ Poor papa! […] (U 5.194–7)
4
Following only the logic of the associations in the published text, readers of Ulysses
would be correct to presume that it was Bloom’s thoughts about Ophelia’s suicide that
prompted him to think of his own father’s death, but reading the work genetically (that is,
as it evolved in a piecemeal manner over an extended period of time on several different
manuscripts), we see that Joyce actually worked the other way round: it was the more
basic description of Bloom’s thoughts about Leah and Virag’s suicide that prompted
Joyce three years later to reinforce an already complex inter-textual parallel to
Shakespeare’s plays.
The overlaid network of Shakespearian allusions in the published text seems to
encourage the view that they prompted Bloom’s sombre thoughts about his father’s
suicide, a view that has been held by generations of readers and critics; however, by
disentangling the creative prompts that generated these additional texts, this singular
critical approach to the scene is destabilised and multiple other avenues of interpretation
are thereby opened up. It is worth noting that all of the information about the
Shakespearean additions to this scene was fully documented in Gabler’s Ulysses: A
Critical and Synoptic Edition since 1984 and was therefore available to any reader who
wanted to examine the later evolution of the work.8 This is a relatively late example of
Joyce’s more general tendency to continue to move away from ‘character psychology’
towards various forms of inter-textual subjectivity, which is one of the issues I will be
investigating in Becoming the Blooms.
We can all agree that, if we let them, the various published versions of Joyce’s
works are more than enough to keep us busy for the rest of our lives. But, as the works
make abundantly clear, Joyce incorporated issues about textual production and reception
into the very fabric of his writing. Therefore, by concentrating the critical reading of the
text on how it is documented in the material traces of its different manuscripts and
printed states, we see what Ulysses actually was in process at various stages. This form of
genetic criticism also explores what the work could have been and therefore historically
re-contextualises the published work we all read. By following this evolution we simply
have more versions of Ulysses to study and read; we inherit a wider, even more complex
textual canvas for our critical interpretations as well as for our enjoyment as readers.
A General Survey of Joyce’s Ulysses Manuscripts9
The text of the first edition of Ulysses in 1922 was notoriously flawed, and from then on
there have been various efforts by Joyce, his printers, publishers, editors, collaborators,
friends, and others to ‘fix’ or otherwise ‘correct’ the text. More recently, earlier
manuscript evidence has come to play an increasingly decisive role in the textual debates
surrounding Ulysses. Until 2000, only twenty-two of Joyce’s Ulysses early (pre-faircopy)
8
Hans Walter Gabler, with Wolfhard Steppe and Claus Melchior, Ulysses: A Critical and
Synoptic Edition (New York and London: Garland Publishing Inc., 1948, 1986), vol. 1, p.
152.
9
This complex topic requires a monograph-length study, so this section is only meant as
a simplified précis; hence the descriptions here are deliberately generic and the number of
citations have been kept to a minimum.
5
holograph manuscripts were known to survive, all but two of which were at the
University at Buffalo.10 That year the NLI acquired a new draft of ‘Circe’.11 Less than a
year later another manuscript, this one for ‘Eumaeus’, came to light and was acquired by
an anonymous private collector.12 In 2002, the NLI acquired fifteen further new
manuscripts for eight of the eighteen episodes of Ulysses, along with other manuscripts;
these are the ‘Joyce Papers 2002’. Assimilating all of this new evidence is an ongoing
collaborative endeavour.
Joyce was not the kind of writer who paid much attention to the quality of his
tools; his notebooks, paper, pencils, pens, and crayons were almost always of the most
ordinary and inexpensive types. Like his notebooks, most of the copybooks in which he
wrote the various drafts of Ulysses were also simple jotters and children’s exercise books
that he could easily acquire at any local stationer’s shop in Trieste, Zurich, or Paris. He
also used loose sheets of paper. For Ulysses, there are five broad categories of manuscript
kinds: Notes, Drafts, Faircopies, Typescripts, and Proofs.
Roughly speaking, today there are over a hundred pages of notes for Ulysses (in the
BL, the NLI, and in Buffalo); there are about thirty-nine holograph drafts (twenty in
Buffalo, two at Cornell University, sixteen in the NLI, and at least one in a private
collection); there are over eight hundred pages of the Rosenbach ‘faircopy’ manuscript in
Philadelphia; and there are also over one thousand four hundred pages of typescript
(almost all of the surviving typescript pages are at Buffalo), of which over one thousand
pages are for the ‘Circe’ and ‘Ithaca’ episodes alone; as well as over five thousand pages
of galley and page proofs for the first edition of Ulysses that are housed in the Houghton
Library (Harvard University), Buffalo, the Firestone Library (Princeton University, New
Jersey), and the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center (University of Texas,
Austin). There are further Ulysses manuscripts elsewhere.
Although the physical documents are spread out in Europe and across the United
States, the Rosenbach manuscript was reproduced in colour facsimile in 1975 and
subsequently all of the other then known Ulysses manuscripts were reproduced in black
and white photo-facsimile in the JJA in 1977–8. This publishing and scholarly effort
culminated in the production of the three-volume Ulysses: A Critical and Synoptic
Edition of Ulysses, prepared by Hans Walter Gabler, Wolfhard Steppe and Claus
Melchior in 1984. This monumental achievement has made the study of the evolution of
Ulysses from the Rosenbach manuscript to Ulysses accessible to scholars who do not
have access to the actual manuscripts or the published facsimiles.
Notes
10
See the appendix, a Census of extant Ulysses holograph manuscripts for further details
about all the extant manuscripts. I have catalogued all of the Ulysses manuscripts at
Buffalo; see http://library.buffalo.edu/pl/collections/jamesjoyce/catalog/v.htm.
11
See Christie’s [Chris Coover et al.], ‘James Joyce’s Ulysses: The John Quinn Draft
Manuscript of the “Circe” episode.’ Christie’s, New York, Thursday, 14 December 2000:
this is now NLI MS 35,958.
12
See Sotheby’s [Peter Selley et al.], ‘The Lost ‘Eumaeus’ Notebook: James Joyce,
Autograph Manuscript of the ‘Eumaeus’ Episode of Ulysses.’ Sotheby’s London, July 10,
2001.
6
Joyce built all of his works from words, phrases, and fragments that he culled from a
myriad of printed sources and then slowly and carefully made his own.13 As far we know,
it seems that he first compiled his notes on slips of paper or simple pocket notebooks,
usually in pencil; throughout his writing career Joyce rarely recorded his sources.
Although there must have been many such documents, only one such notebook survives.
Joyce compiled this Ulysses notebook in Zurich in early 1918. His English friend there at
the time, the painter Frank Budgen, vividly captured the writer’s methods:
In one of the richest pages of Ulysses Stephen, on the sea shore [in ‘Proteus’],
communing with himself and tentatively building with words, calls for his tablets.
These should have been library slips, acquired by the impecunious and ingenious
poet from the library counter [at the NLI]. On that occasion he had forgotten to
provide himself with this convenient writing material, and was forced to use the
fag-end of Mr. Deasy’s letter. As far as concerns the need for tablets, the self-
portrait was still like, only in Zürich Joyce was never without and they were not
library slips, but little writing blocks specially made for the waistcoat pocket. At
intervals, alone or in conversation, seated or walking, one of these tablets was
produced, and a word or two scribbled on it at lightning speed as ear or memory
served his turn.14
The surviving notebooks document the artisan-like way in which Joyce gathered material
and then assembled Ulysses. Joyce wrote these notes hastily and only for himself, which
accounts for the appearance of his handwriting in the notebooks (as opposed to the
meticulous way in which he wrote his manuscripts for his typists and other readers). Then
he habitually crossed through the words he had incorporated into his writings with
variously coloured crayons. He did not use one particular crayon colour for different
episodes as some scholars had thought previously. Instead, whether working on Ulysses
or Finnegans Wake, Joyce systematically would use one colour crayon to cross through
the notes he used on a particular draft level (that is, during the same period of
composition or revision of the text). Budgen’s account of Joyce’s note-taking practices
continues:
No one knew how all this material was given place in the completed pattern of his
work, but from time to time in Joyce’s flat one caught glimpses of a few of those
big orange-coloured envelopes that are one of the glories of Switzerland, and these
I always took to be store-houses of building material. The method of making a
multitude of criss-cross notes in pencil was a strange one for a man whose sight
13
The Early Commonplace Book (NLI MS 36,639/02; see pp. [19r]–[21v], for example)
is a very early example of Joyce’s method of working from prior notes. At the other end
of Joyce’s career we have the fifty-odd ‘Work in Progress’/Finnegans Wake Notebooks,
virtually all of which are at Buffalo; see
http://library.buffalo.edu/pl/collections/jamesjoyce/catalog/vi.htm.
14
Frank Budgen, James Joyce and the Making of ‘Ulysses’ and Other Writings, with an
introduction by Clive Hart (London: Oxford University Press, 1972), p. 176.
7
was never good. A necessary adjunct to the method was a huge oblong magnifying
glass.15
As Joyce’s work on Ulysses progressed, he copied in ink his earlier notes from various
notebooks into new ones or on to large sheets of paper; these are what I call ‘second
order’ note-repositories. He generally organized his notes under headings; usually these
were the names of the episodes, but in at least one early instance he used character names
or thematic subject headings. This ‘subject’ notebook is the earliest surviving compilation
notebook. Some of the headings are obviously relevant, while others play more subtle
roles in Ulysses. On the last page of the notebook, Joyce simply resorted to a catchall
category he would use again in his notebooks: ‘Words’. He incorporated these words in
every episode of Ulysses in different drafts, typescript, and proofs from 1918 through
1921. He used at least a dozen of these notes word-for-word in ‘Cyclops’ and at least
three each in ‘Telemachus’ and ‘Scylla and Charybdis’.
As far as we know based on the later note-repositories that survive, Joyce seems to
have found that sorting his notes by episode headings was a more effective procedure for
writing and revising Ulysses. In general, he was quite methodical in the way he organized
these later ‘episode’ notebooks and notesheets. Joyce would write all of the headings
first, underline them in crayon, and then fill the pages as he came across words and
phrases elsewhere that he thought were appropriate to one or another episode, although it
was not uncommon for him to ultimately use a note in a different episode. Joyce sorted
his older notes in the main body of the page and left himself an ever-expanding left-hand
margin because (just as with his drafts) he knew he would use that space to add yet more
words and phrases. Joyce filled the margins of these note-repositories these words and
phrases in any open space, and often in several different directions. There are many
examples of incredibly cluttered and wonderfully colourful pages in Joyce’s Ulysses
notebooks and notesheets.
Drafts
Joyce did not write Ulysses from its first to its last word consecutively, rather at least
initially he wrote the episodes in a non-sequential order as the contours of the work
evolved and expanded over many years.16 Then, with the prospect of having his work
15
Budgen, Making of ‘Ulysses’, pp. 176–7.
16
With the notable exception of ‘Proteus’, before the discovery of the new NLI
manuscripts, all of the then known manuscripts cluster around the middle of the book
from ‘Sirens’ to ‘Eumaeus’. Given the fact that Joyce had been working on Ulysses since
at least 16 June 1915 (about five and half years before Ulysses was published), the
manuscripts that were then known to survive are all relatively late, dating from 1917 to
early 1921. In 1999, there was no documentary evidence of the early genesis of episodes
4 to 9, ‘Calypso’ through ‘Scylla and Charybdis’. Since Joyce began to hold on to his
working drafts relatively late Joyce began to hold on to his working drafts relatively late,
most likely what has survived for these episodes is just based on chance. More often than
not he simply disposed of the manuscripts once they had been recopied because he no
longer needed them.
8
published, he wrote and then rewrote the individual episodes of Ulysses successively
from late 1917 through mid 1921, elaborating the text at each stage. It is unlikely that any
of the Ulysses manuscripts that are known to survive are complete first drafts, although
there are quite a few first draft sections in many of these manuscripts. Predictably
enough, the earlier versions of an episode’s manuscripts are the most chaotic because
Joyce would often fill whatever open space he found on the page with more and more
text. These earlier drafts are usually the messiest and most difficult to decipher, and seem
also to have been so even for Joyce. He wanted to make sure he had incorporated all of
the material he had written, including the marginal and left-hand page additions, so he
would cross through methodically the text in coloured crayons as he re-wrote it in later
versions. In fact, this practice is just an extension of Joyce’s method when he used word
and phrases from his notebooks and, unsurprisingly, it is a common procedure with other
writers as well. In general, Joyce’s cluttered earlier drafts were stages toward more
legible drafts.
Hampered by poor eyesight, but prompted by his creative impulses, every stage of
re-writing was an occasion to develop the text. As far as we know Joyce recopied all of
the Ulysses manuscripts by hand more than once before they were given to a typist. From
his earliest works onwards, from Stephen Hero to Finnegans Wake, Joyce developed
certain writing habits that he used throughout his writing career. An example of this is
that he usually filled the right-hand page of a copybook first, leaving himself a wide and
expanding left margin. He then filled the margins as well as the left-hand page with
further revisions and additions, returning to the same manuscript again and again to add a
word or two in pencil, as well as many phrases and sentences and even paragraphs in ink,
between the lines, in the margins, and then in any available space.
His first compulsion was to transfer all of the text he had already written on an
earlier draft to the next version, but as the author he was not constrained to act simply as
a scribe when he copied out the older versions of the text. In fact, Joyce regularly revised
the text as part of the process of rewriting the earlier version; this makes attempts to ‘fix’
the text particularly problematic for editors. These later drafts are more uniform: the
margins are more fixed; and the additions are generally less numerous, but even these
‘later’ drafts are just the next stage in the creative process. At every occasion, Joyce
added further words, sentences, paragraphs, whole sections, and even episodes to
Ulysses. For example, Joyce only conceived the pivotal episode, ‘Wandering Rocks’ (at
least as we know it) at the start of 1919. Quite ill at the time but with pressing publication
deadlines, he dictated (probably from previously written but as yet unused fragments) the
first complete draft of the episode to Frank Budgen. Unlike other writers (Beckett, for
example), Joyce rarely deleted anything that he had already written.
Faircopies
From September 1917 to March 1921, Joyce quite systematically re-wrote his drafts yet
again, sequentially episode by episode, but now he was doing so in his most legible hand.
The majority of these ‘faircopy’ (Rosenbach) manuscripts were intended to provide a
more readable copy of the text for the typists, although Joyce still made further
alterations to these ‘clean’ copies. It is important to note that (due to various exigencies)
the extant faircopy manuscript of Ulysses is a mixed document. For some of the episodes,
9
the faircopies were certainly used to produce the extant typescripts,17 and these in turn
were used to set up The Little Review instalments of Ulysses.18 On the other hand, for
other episodes the Rosenbach manuscript versions were clearly not used to produce the
typescript.19 Finally, only some individual pages (or sections) of the Rosenbach
manuscript were used to produce the typescripts of ‘Nausicaa’ and ‘Oxen of the Sun’:
Joyce presumably recopied the other pages because they had become too messy with
additions and changes to be suitable for sale. Therefore, the Rosenbach manuscript has
been central to the debates concerning the ‘critically edited’ texts of Ulysses since 1984.
Joyce’s ‘faircopy manuscript’ of Ulysses comprises over eight hundred leaves.
Almost seven hundred are loose sheets, the rest are in two notebooks (for ‘Ithaca’ and
‘Penelope’) that are similar to Joyce’s draft manuscripts. The two new NLI manuscripts
for those episodes reveal that the ‘faircopy’ versions of these final episodes are much
more complicated and problematic than was previously thought, although the Rosenbach
manuscript versions of these episodes were also used to produce the typescripts.
Another reason Joyce re-copied his manuscript in a clear and legible hand, in this
case on relatively expensive paper, was because he was selling it piecemeal to John
Quinn. Modern manuscript collectors had always prized these relatively uniform and
more traditional ‘holograph manuscripts’ (that is, manuscripts that are ‘hand-written’ by
the author). Quinn, the New York, Irish-American lawyer who had unsuccessfully
defended the editors of The Little Review in court, was also a well known patron and
collector of the arts, specifically of modernist literature and painting. He had also bought
Joyce’s holograph manuscript of Exiles in March 1917, and then he wrote a laudatory
review of A Portrait for Vanity Fair. In 1923–4 Quinn put his vast collection of rare
books, manuscripts, and art for sale at auction. A.S.W. Rosenbach, one of the most
influential manuscript and book dealers of his era, acquired Quinn’s Ulysses manuscript,
and it is now at the Rosenbach Museum & Library in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Typescripts
At the end of 1917, the prospect that Ulysses would begin to appear serially in The Little
Review in the US and The Egoist in the UK prompted Joyce to have his manuscripts
typed. He gave the typists precise instructions to leave a wide left-hand (and almost no
17
Various typists used the Rosenbach faircopy manuscripts for only ten episodes:
‘Telemachus’ through ‘Calypso’, ‘Wandering Rocks’, ‘Cyclops’, and ‘Circe’ through
‘Penelope’.
18
Harriet Shaw Weaver marked up her own copies of The Little Review for the printers to
set up the few sections of Ulysses that appeared in The Egoist.
19
There are numerous and sometimes substantial variations in the text between the
Rosenbach manuscripts and the typescripts for certain episodes, but there is not enough
textual or contextual information to determine the precise relationships between the
extant individual ‘faircopy’ manuscripts and the typescripts. It is possible that certain
now lost manuscripts produced both the Rosenbach manuscript versions as well as the
typescripts at different times; or else, one or more subsequent documents intervened
between the Rosenbach manuscripts and typescripts, but the situation may be different
with different episodes.
10
right-hand) margin on the page because he knew he would use that space for corrections
and further additions, just as he usually did when he wrote by hand. Most of the
typescripts of the first fourteen episodes that appeared serially in magazines were typed
in at least three copies. Joyce similarly corrected and revised at least two of these copies
at the same time, but he only cursorily revised a third, and we think this was usually the
copy he retained. He would then send at least one copy to Ezra Pound, who passed it on
to The Little Review for serial publication. Joyce expected to be able to further revise the
published The Little Review text for the printing of Ulysses, but this sensible plan became
untenable for various reasons.
Only five instalments of Ulysses appeared in The Egoist from January-February
through December 1919: ‘Nestor’, ‘Proteus’, ‘Hades’, and a portion of ‘Wandering
Rocks’. On the other hand, Ulysses appeared in twenty-three issues of The Little Review
from March 1918 to September-December 1920, but its editorial policy of ‘Making No
Compromise with Public Taste’ caused the magazine and Ulysses to be censored and then
banned in the United States. The Little Review did manage to publish ‘Telemachus’ to the
first section of ‘Oxen of the Sun’, although four issues were seized by the US authorities:
the January 1919 issue, with ‘Lestrygonians’; the April-May issue, with the second
instalment of ‘Scylla & Charybdis’; the January 1920 issue, with the middle portion of
‘Cyclops’; and, finally, the July-August issue, with the concluding portion of ‘Nausicaa’.
In December 1920, The Little Review was suspended. For some reason only a few pages
of the typescripts for the first three episodes are known to have survived, even though
they too were used to set up the proofs for Ulysses, just like the typescripts for all the
later episodes.
Joyce wrote all of his works by hand. His friend, Frank Budgen, recounts the
following scene:
In leaving the café I asked Joyce how long he had been working on Ulysses.
‘About five years,’ he said. ‘But in a sense all my life.’
‘Some of your contemporaries,’ I said, ‘think two books a year an average output.’
‘Yes,’ said Joyce. ‘But how do they do it? They talk them into a typewriter. I feel
quite capable of doing that if I wanted to do it. But what’s the use? It isn’t worth
doing.’20
Although later in life Joyce (reluctantly and unsuccessfully) tried to learn to use a
typewriter, this technique of writing did not suit his creative methods. Therefore, he
relied on an odd assortment of typists, often friends, as well as friends of friends, only
some of whom even owned their own typewriters. Beginning in late 1917, the typescripts
for the earlier episodes were prepared by one of Joyce’s friends, the ‘English Players’
actor, Claud Sykes. Since Joyce was staying in Locarno, as Sykes prepared the typescript
in Zurich, Joyce’s obsessive inclination to revise and alter the text prompted him to write
several postcards to Sykes (see, for example, LI 108–9) with instructions for changes to
the text as it was being typed.
Many factors contributed to the problem of getting Ulysses into print accurately as
Joyce wrote it (or wanted it written). Not only was his handwriting often difficult to read
20
Budgen, Making of ‘Ulysses’, p. 22.
11
even on the faircopy (especially for amateur typists), but Joyce also continued to make
numerous and substantial changes to the text on the typescripts as they were returned to
him. He kept at least one copy of the early typescripts, and he further revised these same
1917–19 typescript copies in 1921 in final preparation for the book’s publication.
It was only during the final stages of preparing Ulysses to appear in book form that
Sylvia Beach and Joyce began using secretaries or other professional typists. For
different reasons, the process of preparing each of the typescripts for the last episodes of
Ulysses was unique. Getting ‘Circe’ typed presented even more problems than Joyce had
faced while writing the episode. Four typists refused to undertake the work, some
because they were unwilling to grapple with the task and others because they objected to
the episode’s content; in fact, in one instance, a typist’s husband read Joyce’s manuscript
and threw a portion of it in the fire. At this point, a troupe of typists was finally recruited
to get this typescript ready.
The typescript of the ‘Eumaeus’ episode was odd because, while the professional
typist did a relatively accurate job of reading Joyce’s manuscript, he or she tried to
‘clarify’ the episode’s convoluted grammar by adding around six hundred commas,
which Joyce had to methodically remove. This typist was also prudish to the point of
leaving blank spaces where s/he disapproved of certain words. Not only did Joyce make
his usual rounds of corrections and additions to this typescript, but he was also compelled
to fill in such words as ‘shite’ and ‘bloody’ on the typescript to prepare it for the
prospective printer of Ulysses.
Another of Joyce’s friends, the American author and publisher, Robert McAlmon,
typed ‘Penelope’ in Paris in mid August 1921. According to an anecdote Richard
Ellmann recounts in his biography, the ‘manuscript was so complicated and Joyce’s
insertions so numerous that occasionally McAlmon got some of Molly’s thoughts out of
place; he told himself it didn’t much matter in what order her unsystematic mind took
them up’ (JJII 514). Actually, the few changes McAlmon made were minor and the care
with which Joyce constructed the episode is well documented in the manuscripts.
On 30 October 1921, Joyce announced that he had finished writing ‘Ithaca’ and so
the composition of Ulysses was complete (see LIII 51). Now, with everyone anxious to
get the book published on 2 February 1922, Joyce’s fortieth birthday, Beach and Joyce
used two different typists, each with their own typewriters, to prepare the episode for the
printer. Not only were parts ‘Ithaca’ re-typed four separate times, but Joyce also revised
each version, adding sixteen percent more text from notes to the typescript, before he sent
it to the printer a full month later. With the later ‘Ithaca’ typescripts, Joyce would
sometimes use the back of a preceding page for yet more additions to a particular
typescript page. He then tagged the additions and drew lines to indicate where they
belonged, just as he would with his own hand-written manuscripts. Joyce then had some
of the earlier, heavily revised typescripts re-typed, often several times.
Proofs
A publisher usually supplies the printer with a complete, final working document (either
an author’s handwritten manuscript or preferably a clean, professionally prepared
12
typescript) from which the process of setting the work in print begins.21 Joyce’s manual
artistry was matched by his printers’ artisanry preparing the book: Ulysses was all set,
gathered, and bound by hand. The process of getting a book printed is usually comprised
of two basic stages, the first of which is setting the text in ‘galleys’ (these are long metal
trays of typeset text from which proof sheets are pulled). With Ulysses this initial phase
of proofs is more accurately understood as a setting of text as ‘galleys in page’ because,
although the text is set continuously down the sheet, it is already separated in page-length
blocks. The proof sheets pulled from this setting are known in French as ‘placards’ and
for Ulysses they usually comprise eight pages of text, set in four vertical columns of two
pages each, that are only printed on one side of the sheet, on inexpensive, often pulp
paper. These galley proofs are returned to the author, who is supposed to correct any
typesetting errors and make what relatively few changes are considered necessary. On the
other hand, Joyce made many significant alterations to the text on the placards of Ulysses
from how it had appeared in print in the Little Review; the most obvious examples are the
‘crossheads’ to ‘Aeolus’ that Joyce only added on the first setting of proofs.
Usually the author returns several sets of corrected galleys to the printer, who then
sets up the ‘gatherings’ of page proofs for the final printing of the book. For Ulysses,
these gatherings were printed as sixteen non-consecutive pages; that is, these sheets were
printed with eight pages on each side that could be folded in such a way that the pages
become sequential in the published book. Then, the author checks these proof sheets
again. Finally, the author indicates what corrections still need to be made, or else the
author and the publisher sign the page proofs as ready to be printed as the published
book. Based on the contract between the publisher, the printer, and sometimes the author,
a certain number of further proofs are provided until the proofs are all ‘signed off’. Then,
in general, the printed gatherings are assembled, the covers are attached, and so the book
is ready.
Very little about the production of Ulysses was straightforward. No established
English-language publisher was willing to take the risk of publishing Ulysses in book
form after the problems The Egoist had faced finding a printer willing to set the work in
the UK and after the editors of The Little Review had been fined for publishing obscenity
in the US. With little prospect of seeing Ulysses appear, Joyce arrived in Paris from
Trieste on 8 July 1920. Soon thereafter, Joyce met Sylvia Beach in her lending library
and bookshop, Shakespeare and Company. Beach’s own account of the events is quite
colourful:
All hope of publication in the English-speaking countries, at least for a long time to
come, was gone. And here in my little bookshop sat James Joyce, sighing deeply.
It occurred to me that something might be done, and I asked: ‘Would you let
Shakespeare and Company have the honor of bringing out your Ulysses?’
21
Ronan Crowley and I prepared a census of all the Ulysses proofs that was published in
GJS (Issue 8), 2008, as ‘The Ulysses Proof^finder’; see Proofs by Episode. Also, see
Crowley’s introduction to the Placards for further, specific information on these
important documents in the genesis of Ulysses.
13
He accepted my offer immediately and joyfully. I thought it rash of him to

entrust his great Ulysses to such a funny little publisher. But he seemed delighted,
and so was I.22
In mid April 1921, Beach and Maurice Darantiere, Master Printer, Dijon, signed a
contract to print and publish Ulysses, but the book was far from done. Joyce still had to
finish writing the last two episodes and these would then have to be typed as well.
Furthermore, Joyce would continue to make corrections, revisions, and additions to the
earlier episodes on the typescripts that had already been made starting in 1917.
Joyce was supposed to make all of his changes on the typescripts before the printer
began the process of typesetting. Nonetheless, the printer began setting the galley proofs
of the first five episodes of Ulysses, ‘Telemachus’ through ‘Lotus Eaters’, between 11
and 17 June 1921. Darantiere assumed that the second set of corrected and revised galley
proofs Joyce had returned would suffice, so the printers moved on to the next stage of
setting the text in page proofs as gatherings, which they sent to Joyce and Beach for their
approval. When Darantiere realised the amount and kinds of changes Joyce had requested
again on these proofs, the printers took the unexpected and costly step of reverting back
to galley proofs in late August 1921.
Although the contract stipulated that the printer would prepare up to five sets of
proofs for the author to correct any typesetting errors, Joyce needed from five to eleven
sets of proofs to accommodate his changes and additions. No one, including Joyce,
anticipated the amount of revisions as well as substantial additions he would make on the
proofs. In all, Ulysses grew approximately one-third longer on the proofs and, shockingly
for Beach,23 all of these changes on proofs accounted for almost a quarter of the entire
printing costs of the first edition. Obviously, without the active cooperation of Joyce’s
publisher and printer, we would not have Ulysses.
[back to top]
Notes on Dante and Italian Vocabulary: 1897–8

(MS 36,639/01)
Joyce compiled these notes in his last year at Belvedere College. They are transcriptions
from and related commentary and annotations on ‘The Inferno’ of Dante’s Divina
Commedia, as well as seemingly unrelated notes on Italian vocabulary in Italian and
English. These pages are the earliest extant record of Joyce’s student reading notes and,
22
Sylvia Beach, Shakespeare and Company (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1959), p. 47.
23
Almost six months after Ulysses was published, Beach recorded that the printing of
Ulysses had cost 42,492 Francs (twice as much as Darantiere had originally estimated)
and the postage for shipping this bulky tome had cost 3,200 Francs so far. By then 39,505
Francs had been paid to Joyce, which is almost thirty percent of the net receipts of the
book’s sales from 19 May 1921 to 27 July 1922, whereas Beach had only received
13,978.80, or just about ten percent. (See Beach’s ‘ULYSSES | Account Rendered’
memorandum: Buffalo MS XVIII: Miscellaneous Material Related to Joyce’s Works,
E.1, folder 21.)
14
as far as we know, he did not use them directly in his writings. His earliest literary
endeavour is ‘Trust Not Appearances’ (probably written in 1896; Cornell MS 1).24
Unlike his later practice, here Joyce also noted the author’s name, ‘Dante’ on p.
[1r], possibly after he had already started taking the notes on some of the later pages. In
2004, Dirk Van Hulle was the first scholar to ascertain that the text and notes are from
Eugenio Camerini’s La Divina Commedia di Dante Alighieri: con note tratte dai migliori
commenti (Milano: Edoardo Sonzogno, 1884).25
[back to top]
Early Commonplace Book: 1903–12

(MS 36,639/02/A)
I prepared a more comprehensive commentary on this manuscript that was published in

GJS Issue 9 (Spring 2009).26 Then, at the start of 2010, Frank Callanan discovered the
precise sources of the two lists of books Joyce transcribed on pp. [16], [17], and then p.
[30] here; see his ‘James Joyce and the United Irishman: Paris 1902–3’ in the Dublin
James Joyce Journal 3 (2010), edited by Luca Crispi and Anne Fogarty (UCD James
Joyce Research Centre in association with the National Library of Ireland), pp. 51–103.
[back to top]
Early Ulysses ‘Subject’ Notebook for Drafts: 1917

(MS 36,639/03)
This manuscript is the earliest extant notebook Joyce prepared specifically to write
Ulysses. The printed label on the front cover is virtually identical to the label on Buffalo
MS V.A.3 (in which Joyce wrote the later ‘Proteus’ draft),27 but notably the label on the
Buffalo draft lists the stationer that produced both these copybooks: ‘Eredi fu D. Pellanda
– Locarno’. Joyce was in Locarno, Switzerland, from 12 October 1917 to January 1918.
This external evidence and the source material for these notes that Wim Van Mierlo has
identified make it clear that Joyce began compiling this notebook no earlier than mid
24
See WD 3; The Critical Writings, edited by Ellsworth Mason and Richard Ellmann
(New York: Viking, 1968), pp. 15–16.
25
Dirk Van Hulle, ‘Joyce and Beckett Discovering Dante’, Joyce Studies 2004, Number
7, edited by Luca Crispi and Catherine Fahy (Dublin: The National Library of Ireland,
2004). It is not known which printing of this Divina Commedia Joyce used but the
pagination between them remained consistent.
26
See Luca Crispi, A Commentary on James Joyce's National Library of Ireland 'Early
Commonplace Book': 1903–1912 (MS 36,639/02/A).
27
See http://library.buffalo.edu/pl/collections/jamesjoyce/catalog/va3.htm.
15
October 1917.28 But, as was his usual practice with this kind of notebook, Joyce almost
certainly had already gathered some or most of the individual notes here beforehand.
It seems that throughout his career Joyce most often began making use of the notes
just after he had started compiling the notebook and this is clearly the case here as well.
He started to use some of these notes to write early drafts of Ulysses in mid October
1917. On the other hand, he also regularly returned to a notebook (even many years
later), sometimes for further entries for drafts but also to transfer them to other note-
repositories; therefore, many of the notes here definitely entered the text of Ulysses via
other note-repositories (possibly various kinds of notebooks and notesheets), only some
of which are known to be extant.
Although there are texts and notes that Joyce used to write Ulysses that predate this
notebook, this manuscript is the earliest extant document solely devoted to his work on
Ulysses. For example, the so-called ‘Alphabetical Notebook’ (Cornell MS 25) is an even
earlier notebook, which Joyce compiled in 1910 in Trieste to write A Portrait, but he then
used other notes from it to write several early drafts of Ulysses as well.29 There is also
another comparatively early notebook that Joyce used to write Ulysses, Buffalo MS
V.A.2.a,30 which he compiled in 1918 in Zurich.31 This notebook is unlike all the other
extant Ulysses notebooks in that it is a ‘first-order’ notebook; that is, Joyce compiled it
directly from the various sources he was reading.32 As such, this early notebook is
different in kind from all the other extant Ulysses notebooks that are compilations of
diverse notes, which Joyce re-sorted in new constellations in these extant notebooks.33
Joyce then began compiling the first part of a further grouping of notes, the so-called BL
Ulysses Notesheets (ADD MSS 49975, fs. 6–29). He began compiling some of these
28
Wim Van Mierlo’s The Subject Notebook: A Nexus in the Composition History of
Ulysses-A Preliminary Analysis is a pivotal essay on this manuscript. It was published in
GJS Issue 7 (Spring 2007) and the reader is referred there for information on the sources
of these notes.
29
The manuscript has been reproduced in colour photo-facsimile on JJA 7.109–56. It has
been transcribed and annotated in WD 92–105.
30
This manuscript was previously catalogued as Buffalo MS VIII.A.5.
31
See http://library.buffalo.edu/pl/collections/jamesjoyce/catalog/va2a.htm. The
manuscript has been reproduced in colour photo-facsimile on JJA 12.129–66. It was
transcribed and annotated in JNEDU, pp. 3–33.
32
The vast majority of the Buffalo Finnegans Wake notebooks are ‘first-order’
compilations; see http://library.buffalo.edu/pl/collections/jamesjoyce/catalog/vi.htm.
33
There was at least one further early Ulysses notebook (that was also compiled in 1918
and in tandem with Buffalo MS V.A.2.a), but it survives only in the form of a partial
amanuensis’s transcription in Buffalo Finnegans Wake MS VI.C.16, pp. [232]–[274]. It is
also catalogued as a so-called ‘Missing Notebook’, Buffalo MS VI.D.7; see
http://library.buffalo.edu/pl/collections/jamesjoyce/catalog/vic16.htm; and JJA 42.348–
59. Danis Rose and John O’Hanlon prepared an edited version of Buffalo MS VI.C.16 as
The Lost Notebook: New Evidence on the Genesis of ‘Ulysses’ (Edinburgh: Split Pea
Press, 1989).
16
sheets in June 1919, but continued to compile further BL notesheets into 1921.34
Furthermore, there are three later Ulysses notebooks at the NLI (MSS 36,639/04, 5A, and
5B, see below) that Joyce compiled from January to May 1921. Finally, there is one other
later Ulysses notebook at Buffalo (MS V.A.2.b [V.A.2]); it is possibly the last extant
Ulysses notebook and it too was compiled in 1921.35 Joyce used virtually all of these later
note-repositories in the final stages of writing and revising Ulysses in manuscript,
typescript, and proofs throughout 1921.
Joyce had written drafts of some episodes of Ulysses (certainly parts of
‘Telemachus’, ‘Nestor’, ‘Hades’, ‘Scylla and Charybdis’, and probably some parts of
other episodes as well) prior to 1917, but no early manuscripts for any of those episodes
are known to be extant.36 At that stage in 1917, these drafts may simply have been
various arrangements of fragmentary texts that may have been quite different from the
versions of the episodes as they evolved in the extant drafts.37
Here Joyce compiled the notes under nineteen subject headings that range from the
names of some of the principal characters (such as ‘Simon’, ‘Stephen’, and ‘Leopold’)
and themes of the work (‘Blind’, ‘Art’, ‘Jesus’, and ‘Homer’) to more abstract headings
(‘? ? ?’, ‘Choses vues’, and ‘Names and Places’). The notes were compiled from a variety
of printed sources, some of which have been analyzed in detail by Van Mierlo, though
others still need to be determined. The physical appearance of the notes here resemble
what we find in most of the later Ulysses notebooks: the handwriting is relatively small,
the notes are in series, usually separated by punctuation, and virtually all are in black ink.
Along with their material disposition, the wide range of sources for these notes indicates
that Joyce compiled the individual notes elsewhere (this is what is known as a ‘second-
order’ notebook), presumably in ‘first-order’ notebooks and/or loose sheets, before he
organized them under the headings here.
It is the only known example of Joyce using what I have called ‘subject’ headings
for Ulysses (as opposed to the Homeric episode titles that head the BL Notesheets and
almost all of the pages of the later notebooks, all of which are tellingly second-order
note-repositories). It is almost certain that there were also other contemporaneous Ulysses
notebooks that Joyce relied on to write and revise drafts during this period. Since they
have not survived, we have no information about whether they were organized under
headings at all and if so what kind they may have been. This notebook is also unusual
because it contains relatively few notes, which I would argue indicates that Joyce did not
find this method of organizing notes under this kind of headings particularly useful.
34
These manuscripts have been reproduced in colour photo-facsimile on JJA 12.02–95.
The manuscripts were transcribed and annotated in UNBM, see p. 526.
35
See http://library.buffalo.edu/pl/collections/jamesjoyce/catalog/va2b.htm. The
manuscript has been reproduced in colour photo-facsimile on JJA 12.97–125. It was
transcribed and annotated by Phillip Herring in JNEDU, pp. 37–118
36
For an invaluable discussion of this little-known period of Joyce’s writing, see Rodney
Owen’s JJBU.
37
For example, the text-blocks that constitute the proto-draft of ‘Proteus’ (NLI MS
36,639/07/A, pp. [1r]–[5r]) as well as the fragments at the end of the earlier ‘Sirens’ draft
(NLI MS 36,639/07/B, pp. [10r]–[14r]) may be indicative of the earlier state of these
transitional texts.
17
Joyce compiled this ‘Subject’ notebook at a crucial juncture in the development of

Ulysses, when Leopold Bloom’s character and the plot of Ulysses were still at a relatively
early stage of development;38 this may explain the expedient of using topical headings
rather than episode names, some of which Joyce had not yet even conceived. He probably
wrote out most of the subject headings before he began organizing the notes. Not only the
kind but also the arrangement of the headings in this notebook differs from those in the
later Ulysses notebooks. Since the headings appear on both the recto pages (on pp. [2]–
[4], [6], and [10]–[13]) as well as on some of the versos, this indicates that Joyce was not
following a regular method of organising this notebook, which is unusual among the
extant notebooks.39
The most notable instance where the headings appear on both the recto and the
verso are on pp. [8v]–[9r]; they are headed ‘Irish’ and ‘Jews’. This particular
juxtaposition of notes is not coincidental since the headings occupy the central pages of
the notebook and the topics are obviously thematically linked in Ulysses. Joyce also
wrote distinct headings on both the recto and verso pages on pp. [4v]–[5r] and [13v]–
[15r].40 Another oddity with these subject headings is that although both pp. [14v] and
[15r] are blank, the final page (a verso) is headed ‘Words’. This seeming exception is
easily explained by the fact that (like ‘Eventuali’) it is a typical catchall heading Joyce
regularly used; therefore, he simply put this grouping in a very convenient place.41
As he used entries from a notebook, Joyce almost always crossed them through in a
coloured crayon. Only some of the crossed-through notes that he used directly from this
notebook have been located in the extant contemporaneous drafts as far as we know;
these are the first notes Joyce used from this notebook. On the other hand, many other
entries have been located in the BL Notesheets and the later Ulysses notebooks (under a
variety of Homeric episode headings, which is not unusual), though some notes may have
been transferred to those BL Notesheets from yet another intermediary note-repository
(or repositories) that is now missing.
38
Significantly, although Joyce had already settled on the character of Molly Bloom (or
‘Mollie’ as she is named here on p. [2r] under the heading ‘Leopold’), she is virtually
absent from these notes.
39
Joyce’s most consistent method of heading a notebook can be seen in NLI MS
36,639/05/B. There he usually headed only the recto page and then used the facing verso
pages for further notes when the recto pages were full.
40
Also, the notes under the heading ‘Theosophy’ on p. [7r] are, again unusually,
continued on p. [7v] rather than the blank p. [6v].
41
There are similar catchall heading at the end of Buffalo Finnegans Wake Notebook
VI.A (the so-called ‘Scribbledehobble’ Finnegans Wake notebook): ‘Books’ (twice),
‘Words’ and ‘Names’. See
http://library.buffalo.edu/pl/collections/jamesjoyce/catalog/via.htm. The inscribed pages
of this manuscript have been reproduced in black and white photo-facsimile in JJA
28.01–253 and some pages were also reproduced in colour on 28.255–86. An edited
preliminary version of the manuscript has been published as James Joyce’s
Scribbledehobble: The Ur-Workbook for ‘Finnegans Wake’ by Thomas Connolly
(Northwestern University Press: 1961).
18
It seems likely that Joyce compiled the entries in the notebook over a relatively
short period of time and then began using some of them to write and revise drafts almost
immediately. Furthermore, over several years Joyce used entries from this notebook to
write or revise every episode of Ulysses. The first confirmable Joyce’s use of the
notebook was to write some of the fragments of the ‘Proteus’ proto-draft (NLI MS
36,639/07/A, see below). Joyce wrote that manuscript from early to mid 1917 and it is the
earliest surviving Ulysses draft, although it is likely that actually he used the notes to
write those fragmentary texts on a preceding, now missing document (or documents). The
notes can be found on pp. [1r], [3r], [5r] (in this order in the ‘Proteus’ manuscript) from
pp. [15r] (‘Weininger’), [8v] (‘Irish’), as well as the final page of the notebook, [15v]
(‘Words’), which indicates that the entire notebook had been compiled before Joyce
wrote that draft.
Several notes from this notebook then appear in the next surviving draft of
‘Proteus’ (Buffalo MS V.A.3) that Joyce completed in the fall of 1917. The earliest
surviving ‘Sirens’ draft (NLI MS 36,639/07/B; notably, this draft is also part of the same
copybook as the earliest ‘Proteus’ manuscript, see below) is the next extant manuscript in
which notes from this notebook have been located. These notes can be found on pp. [7r],
[10r] and [13r], [6r] and [5r], as well as [7v] and [7r] of that manuscript and are from pp.
[1r] (‘Simon’), [2r] (‘Leopold’), [4r] (‘Recipes’) and [15v] (‘Words’) in this notebook,
although again Joyce may have used the notes from this notebook in a document that
preceded that ‘Sirens’ manuscript.
Entries from this notebook are also found in all the episodes for which the
Rosenbach faircopy manuscripts are the earliest surviving drafts (that is, ‘Telemachus’,
‘Nestor’, and ‘Calypso’ through ‘Lestrygonians’) as well as the earliest surviving draft of
‘Scylla and Charybdis’ (NLI MS 36,639/08/A, see below), all of which Joyce had written
by mid 1918. Entries from this notebook are also found on the Rosenbach manuscript of
‘Wandering Rocks’, the earlier ‘Cyclops’ manuscript (Buffalo MS V.A.8), and the later
‘Sirens’ manuscript (NLI MS 36,639/09, see below); all of which were written by August
1919. It is possible that Joyce used these notes directly from this notebook as their source
to write these drafts as well as earlier versions of the extant drafts.
It seems that thereafter Joyce returned to the notebook primarily to disperse some
of its entries into other note-repositories; specifically, they can be found on BL
Notesheets ‘Cyclops’ 8 and 10, particularly the latter. Interestingly, Joyce also transferred
notes from Buffalo MS V.A.2.a (as well as from the early Ulysses notebook that only
survives as transcribed by an amanuensis in Buffalo Finnegans Wake MS V.C.16) to
many of the BL ‘Cyclops’ Notesheets as well. Since those notesheets were all used to
write and revise both levels of the extant ‘Cyclops’ drafts (see below), the transfer of
notes in these cases must have occurred before June 1919 while Joyce was in Zurich.
Further notes, though only possibly taken directly from this notebook, were also
transferred from here to BL ‘Oxen’ Notesheet 6 by the start of 1920 in Trieste. Later,
further notes were transferred to BL ‘Ithaca’ 12 and ‘Circe’ 3 Notesheets, as well as NLI
MS 36,639/05/B, p. [6r], but presumably these notes passed through one or more
intermediary note-repositories before ending up in that notebook.
Finally, in a further unusual turn in the afterlife of this early Ulysses notebook, in
early 1935 while he was writing ‘Work in Progress’/Finnegans Wake, Joyce passed it on
19
(along with NLI MSS 36,639/04, 5A, and 5B) to his amanuensis, Mme France Raphael,
who transcribed it (as Buffalo MS VI.C.7.255–69).42
[back to top]
I. Later Ulysses Notebook: February–May 1921

For Drafts, Typescripts, and Proofs (MS 36,639/04)43
Joyce compiled the notes in this manuscript at the start of 1921 (sometime between
February and May, probably earlier rather than later) and used it continuously in tandem
with his other, then current note-repositories until January 1922, just before Ulysses was
finally published. He first used this notebook to continue writing the last episodes of
Ulysses, then to revise the typescripts of the earlier episodes for the printer, and
subsequently to revise the various settings of proofs of virtually all the episodes. It is one
of the later ‘second-order’ Ulysses notebooks (that is, Joyce compiled and sorted it from
previously gathered notes), along with the extant BL Notesheets (for ‘Cyclops’ through
‘Penelope’ only), the NLI MSS 36,639/05/A and 5/B, and the Buffalo MS V.A.2.b.
For now this is still a preliminary assessment of Joyce’s uses of the notebook; a
more comprehensive analysis will be part of proper digital editions of all the NLI Ulysses
notebooks that will set out the sources of the notes, the complete draft usage, as well as
the notebooks’ relationships to one another and to the other Ulysses note-repositories and
manuscripts. So far I have begun to source the notes; like most of Joyce’s notes, they are
based on a variety of printed sources. Given the impetus that research tools like Google
books and online database have given to notebook source-studies, this work will be much
less difficult than it was in the past.44 Therefore, I have concentrated for now on
determining the earliest draft usages of the individual notebook pages in order to
42
See http://library.buffalo.edu/pl/collections/jamesjoyce/catalog/vic7.htm; JJA 41.436–
40.
43
The NLI’s manuscript numeration (as ‘04’, ‘05/A’, and ‘05/B’) was assigned by Peter
Kenny, but was based on earlier and only partial analyses by Michael Groden and others.
(See Michael Groden’s ‘The National Library of Ireland’s New Joyce Manuscripts: A
Statement and Document Descriptions’, JJQ Vol. 39, Number 1 (Fall 2001 [February
2003]), pp. 29–51, as well as ‘The Archive in Transition: The National Library
of Ireland’s New Joyce Manuscripts’ in Michael Groden, ‘Ulysses’ in Focus: Genetic,
Textual, and Personal Views (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2010), pp. 14–31.)
These designations are misleading in several respects, but cannot be altered at this stage,
though my catalogue will address this issue in a more comprehensive manner. Most
importantly, obviously, these are three distinct manuscripts and so they should have been
listed as MSS ‘04’, ‘05’, and ‘06’ (with all subsequent manuscripts being assigned a +1
number). Based on my current research, I would tentatively order the manuscripts in the
following order: MS 36,639/05/B first, probably 5/A second, and therefore 4 last.
44
See Geert Lernout’s recently published essay on the use of search engines to track
down note sources as well as inter-textual references in Joyce’s writings: ‘Joyce World-
Wide Intertext’, JJQ Vol. 47, Number 2 (Winter 2010), pp. 247–53.
20
establish the terminus a quo of the notebook’s compilation. I have ascertained most of the
draft usage on the extant manuscripts, typescripts, and proofs (the remaining draft usage
can be ascertained by collating the extant manuscripts), and I am investigating the inter-
textual connections between the notebooks and manuscripts as Joyce continued to write
and revise Ulysses.45
Aside from the extant manuscripts themselves, we have only minimal further
information about Joyce’s notes from his correspondence. For example, three days after
first arriving in Paris, Joyce wrote to Harriet Shaw Weaver on 12 July 1920:
My intention is to remain here three months in order to write the last adventure
Circe in peace (?) and also the first episode of the close. For this purpose I brought
with me a recast of my notes and MS and also an extract of insertions for the first
half of the book in case it be set up during my stay here. The book contains
(unfortunately) one episode more than you suppose in your last letter. I am very
tired of it and so is everyone else. (SL 265–6)46
Ulysses actually appeared a full year and a half later and Joyce in fact stayed in Paris for
about twenty more years. The BL Notesheets for ‘Cyclops’ to ‘Oxen’ (and probably some
of the other sheets as well) are presumably remnants of the ‘recast of my notes’. But
Joyce probably did not revise the earlier episodes from the ‘extract of insertions for the
first half of the book’ at this time; he was simply too busy with ‘Circe’ and then
‘Eumaeus’ to do any other work. Four months later, Joyce referred to his notes again in a
letter to John Quinn:
I began Ulysses in 1914 and shall finish it, I suppose, in 1921. […] The complete
notes fill a small valise, but in the course of continual changings very often it was
not possible to sort them for the final time before the publication of certain
instalments. The insertions (chiefly verbal or phrases, rarely passages) must be put
in for the book publication. Before leaving Trieste I did this sorting for all episodes
up to and including Circe. The episodes which have the heaviest burden of addenda
are Lotus-eaters, Lestrygonians, Nausikaa and Cyclops. (24 November 1920; LIII
30–1)
The extant Ulysses notebooks do not constitute what Joyce referred to here as the
‘complete notes’ because they were all compiled in Paris in 1921 (some of the later BL
Notesheets were also compiled in Paris in 1920–1), but what survives in these notebooks
for the earlier episodes were almost certainly based on that bulky assortment. Besides the
NLI and Buffalo notebooks, no other notes for the ‘Telemachus’ through ‘Sirens’
45
I am indebted to Ronan Crowley for sharing his original work on ‘Circe’, most of
which is still unpublished. He was the first to determine the complex relationship
between the NLI notebooks and the BL ‘Circe’ Notesheets. See "His Dark Materials":
Joyce's "Scribblings" and the Notes for 'Circe' in the National Library of Ireland’ in GJS
Issue 6 (Spring 2006).
46
This particularly important letter should be read in its entirety to appreciate Joyce’s
state of mind as he set about the arduous task of finishing Ulysses.
21
episodes survive. A collation of the additions and revisions to the typescripts for those
episodes (and, when they are missing, to the first settings of proofs) to determine how
many of them cannot be traced to the extant notesheets and notebooks gives a clear
indication of the relatively large quantity of note-repositories that are not known to have
survived.
On 5 January 1921, after having finished ‘Circe’ (or so he had hoped), Joyce
wrote to his Triestine friend Ettore Schmitz (Italo Svevo):
The Eumeus episode, which is almost finished, will also be ready around the end of
the month. […] Now for the important matter: I cannot leave here (as I had hoped
to) before May. As a matter of fact, for months I have not gone to bed before 2 or 3
in the morning, working without respite. I shall soon have used up the notes I
brought with me here so as to write these two episodes [‘Circe’ and ‘Eumaeus’].
[…] Having urgent need of these notes [further notes that Joyce had left in Trieste]
[…], I address this petition to you, most honourable colleague, begging you to let
me know if any member of your family intends to come to Paris in the near future,
in which case I should be most grateful if the above-mentioned person would have
the kindness to bring me the briefcase [‘mappa’] specified on the back of this
sheet.47
There is a great deal of play and exaggeration in Joyce’s letter to his friend Schmitz,
presumably this is also the case with the description of his ‘briefcase’ of notes, but we
have no other, more precise information about what Joyce refers to as his ‘mappa’ of
Triestine notes. Presumably this bulky and mysterious consignment was delivered to
Paris (when or how is also not known), but I suspect that the extant notebooks (along
with others) are a distillation of precisely that earlier hoard of notes.48 Generally, there
are relatively few notes for most of the early episodes, especially for the first three (in
any of the notebooks that survive). Since even those episodes were more than just lightly
revised in typescript and proofs, there obviously must also have been other note-
repositories that are presently not known to be extant.
As I have already discussed above, throughout his career Joyce typically used his
notebooks shortly after he had finished compiling them. If this pattern holds here as well,
then I suggest that this notebook was compiled from February to May 1921, since its first
draft usage was writing and revising the earliest extant ‘Penelope’ manuscript (NLI MS
36,639/14), which so far I have not been able to date any more precisely than early
summer 1921. Nonetheless, Joyce had certainly completely finished compiling this
notebook by early June 1921, since he relied on it to revise the first placards of the initial
five episodes (‘Telemachus’ to ‘Lotus Eaters’), which Darantiere set from 11–17 June.
Those revisions were incorporated in the second setting of the placards by the end of the
month. Joyce continuously returned to this notebook as he further revised the early
episodes and began revising the later ones. Again based on the immediacy of draft usage,
I do not believe this notebook is the earliest or likely the last of the extant Ulysses note-
47
This is Ellmann’s translation; see SL 275–7.
48
Further work on the printed sources of these notes may indicate how many of them are
based on Joyce’s reading in Paris in 1920–1.
22
repositories Joyce compiled in 1921: presumably Joyce compiled both MSS 36,639/05/A
and 5/B before this notebook, and Buffalo MS V.A.2.b is either contemporaneous with it
or an even later compilation.
The arrangement of the episode headings in each of the extant notebooks is
different. Here they proceed from recto to verso to recto sequentially (as a codex-
copybook is usually used) covering the entire work from the first to last episodes (with
the notable exception of ‘Sirens’ which is not represented in this notebook), and the usual
‘Eventuali’ heading at the end of the run of episodes. Joyce continued filling five further
pages with ‘Penelope’ notes, often directly in mid phrase; writing this episode was clearly
the major focus of Joyce’s attention as he compiled this notebook.49 Joyce did not bother
to head these last ‘Penelope’ pages as he proceeded (again unusually) still from recto to
verso on subsequent pages. At a later stage, Joyce used some of the open spaces on the
versos towards the front of the copybook primarily for further ‘Circe’ notes (including
the last page, [12v]) and once for further ‘Cyclops’ notes (p. [6v]).50
[back to top]
II. Later Ulysses Notebook: February–May 1921

For Drafts, Typescripts, and Proofs (MS 36,639/05/A)
Joyce also compiled this notebook sometime between February and May 1921. In the
same letter to John Quinn quoted above, Joyce continued:
Therefore, I must stipulate to have three sendings of proofs (preferably a

widemargined one must be pulled), namely:
(1) A galley-page proof of all the book up to and including Circe.
(2) A similar proof of the three chapters of the Nostos.
(3) A complete proof of the book in page form. (24 November 1920; LIII 30–1)
Joyce’s first use of this notebook was to revise a printers’ typescript of ‘Hades’ in late
July 1921. Even though other extant notebooks were also used for that level of revision,
this provides further evidence that this notebook was not the earliest notebook Joyce
49
In fact, there are only five other pages of notes for ‘Penelope’ all together in the other
two NLI notebooks, though, of course, there are seven BL Notesheets for the episode
(according to Herring’s numbering; see UNBM 490–517), as well at least seven-and-a-
half pages in Buffalo MS V.A.2.b, pp. [1r]–[3v], [4v], and [19v] (see JNEDU 55–73, 77–
9, and 116), which further reinforces the connection between these two late notebooks.
50
Along with all the other NLI Ulysses notebooks, Joyce passed this notebook on to his
amanuensis, Mme France Raphael, who transcribed it (as Buffalo MS VI.C.7, pp. [235]–
[254]) in early 1935 while he was writing ‘Work in Progress’/Finnegans Wake. See
http://library.buffalo.edu/pl/collections/jamesjoyce/catalog/vic7.htm; JJA 41.431–6. It is
odd that the Buffalo notebook (MS V.A.2.b) was not similarly transcribed with these
other Ulysses notebooks. On the other hand, the fact that this notebook was transcribed
after the earlier Ulysses notebook (NLI MS 36,639/03) and before the other late
notebooks (NLI MSS 36,639/05A and 5/B) seems simply to have been a coincidence.
23
compiled or used in 1921. Its compilation falls in the middle of this extremely busy
period in the composition and transformation of Ulysses.
Joyce’s usual procedure in the later Ulysses notebooks that survive was to write
the headings at the top of just the recto page and underline them first all the way through
the notebook. Then, when he had filled that page, he would use the facing verso page for
other notes for that episode (usually not bothering to repeat the heading).51
[back to top]
III. Later Ulysses Notebook: January–February 1921

For Drafts, Typescripts, and Proofs (MS 36,639/05/B)
This is most likely the earliest of the extant later ‘second-order’ Ulysses notebooks.52 As I
have already argued, throughout his career Joyce typically used his notebooks shortly
after he had finished compiling them. If this pattern holds here as well, then he compiled
the notebook just before mid February 1921, presumably in January or early February
(but certainly no later), since its first draft usage was the earliest extant ‘Eumaeus’
manuscripts, which Joyce was certainly also writing in February. He next used this
notebook to write and revise the ‘Ithaca’ and ‘Penelope’ episodes.53
The ‘Eumaeus’ notes here are of particular interest because they help to
understand and date that episode’s various drafts (and thereby some of the relevant
notesheets and notebook pages as well). The episode’s earliest extant draft is the so-
called ‘Eumeo’ manuscript, which is now in private hands.54 Based on a preliminary
analysis of the available reproductions of the ‘Eumeo’ manuscript, it appears to be the
direct antecedent of the only other pre-faircopy manuscript, the partial Buffalo MS
V.A.21.55 Similarly, the Buffalo manuscript—plus a now missing complementary
manuscript (or manuscripts)—was the immediate antecedent of the Rosenbach (faircopy)
manuscript of the episode. Again based on a preliminary analysis, it is clear that Joyce
used some of the BL ‘Eumaeus’ Notesheets to both write and revise the ‘Eumeo’
manuscript, presumably in Trieste in 1920.
51
Along with all the other NLI Ulysses notebooks, fourteen years after he had compiled
it, Joyce also passed on this notebook to his amanuensis, Mme France Raphael, who
transcribed it (as Buffalo MS VI.C.7, pp. [136]–[198]) in early 1935 as he worked
towards finishing ‘Work in Progress’/Finnegans Wake. See
http://library.buffalo.edu/pl/collections/jamesjoyce/catalog/vic7.htm; JJA 41.406–22.
52
That is, Joyce compiled and sorted it from previous notes as well, along with the BL
Notesheets (for ‘Cyclops’ through ‘Penelope’ only), the NLI MSS 36,639/04 and 5/A,
and the even later Buffalo MS V.A.2.b.
53
Since only some of the manuscripts for those episodes survive, Joyce’s various uses of
these notebooks can also be inferred by collation.
54
See Sotheby’s [Peter Selley et al.], ‘The Lost ‘Eumaeus’ Notebook: James Joyce,
Autograph Manuscript of the ‘Eumaeus’ Episode of Ulysses.’ Sotheby’s London, July 10,
2001.
55
See http://library.buffalo.edu/pl/collections/jamesjoyce/catalog/va21.htm; JJA 15.321–
68.
24
Furthermore, it is now also clear that Joyce used two of the NLI later Ulysses
notebooks (MSS 36,639/05/A and 5/B) to further revise the ‘Eumeo’ manuscript in Paris
in February 1921 as well. A more comprehensive analysis of Buffalo MS V.A.21
confirms this scenario: BL ‘Eumaeus’ Notesheet as well as NLI notebook entries appear
throughout the draft as part of the main text and as additions and revisions.56
Subsequently, Joyce used the notesheets and notebooks to continue to write and revise
every level of the episode’s text.
Another interesting feature here is the transfer of notes (at times sequentially and
hence directly) from the BL ‘Eumaeus’ Notesheets to this notebook. The transferred
notes are sporadic on p. [6v] but quite consistent on p. [9r] and this page comprises the
most concentrated transfer of notes from the BL Notesheets to any of the extant
notebooks. If that page can be taken as paradigmatic of Joyce’s methods of compiling
subsequent note-repositories (in this case it is an at least ‘third order’ notebook page),
then a clear (and not unexpected) pattern emerges. Joyce must have relied on several
different prior note-repositories to compile this page, only some of which are known to
be extant. Although there is a relatively long series of notes that come from a (broken)
sequence of notes on BL ‘Eumaeus’ 1.87–137, they are preceded by other notes from BL
‘Eumaeus’ 5, and immediately followed by notes from BL ‘Eumaeus’ 1.10, 11, 17 and
111 (in that order), and then several further notes from BL ‘Eumaeus’ 4. None of these
transferred entries are completely sequential, there are always intervening notes that have
not been located on any BL ‘Eumaeus’ notesheet, which supports the contention that
Joyce used further note-repositories to compile this page. Presumably, this is the case
with all of the later Ulysses notebooks.
The notes look as though they were taken hurriedly and the headings are often
abbreviated (for example, ‘Cycl’ (three times), ‘Naus’, ‘Lotus’, ‘Scy & Caryb’ and
‘Eol’). No clear pattern of organizing the headings is apparent throughout the notebook,
although some pages are related to one another.57
[back to top]
Earlier Typescript Schema for Ulysses: November 1921

The Harriet Shaw Weaver-Paul Léon Typescript Copy
(MS 36,639/06)
I have prepared a complete analysis of the various earlier and later 1921 Ulysses
typescript schemata as part of my catalogue description of the ‘Beach Schema’ (Buffalo
MS V.A.1.b.i [V.A.1.b]); see
http://library.buffalo.edu/pl/collections/jamesjoyce/catalog/va1bi.htm.
56
The same pattern holds for those parts of the Rosenbach manuscript of the episode that
are not covered by Buffalo MS V.A.21.
57
Along with all the other NLI Ulysses notebooks, Joyce also passed on this notebook to
his amanuensis, Mme France Raphael, who transcribed it (as Buffalo MS VI.C.7, pp.
[202]–[234]) in early 1935 while Joyce was writing ‘Work in Progress’/Finnegans Wake.
See http://library.buffalo.edu/pl/collections/jamesjoyce/catalog/vic7.htm; JJA 41.423–31.
25
[back to top]
Earlier Partial Drafts of ‘Proteus’ and ‘Sirens’ and Notes: 1917

(MS 36,639/07/A–B)
This copybook contains partial drafts and further texts for two distinct episodes: ‘Proteus’
(36,639/07/A) and ‘Sirens’ (7/B/1) as well as a loose sheet with fragments that are part of
the ‘Sirens’ texts at this earlier draft level (7/B/2). For a later, complete draft of ‘Proteus’
see Buffalo MS V.A.3;58 for a later draft of ‘Sirens’ see MS 36,639/09 below and its
continuation in Buffalo MS V.A.5.59
This document is unique among the extant Ulysses manuscripts for several reasons.
Firstly, it is the only known instance in which Joyce wrote texts, fragments, and drafts for
two different episodes in the same copybook. Furthermore, the ‘Proteus’ fragments (pp.
[1r]–[5r]) are the earliest extant texts Joyce wrote specifically for any episode of Ulysses.
Also, the ‘Sirens’ portion of the copybook is composed of two distinct parts: 1) a
continuous early draft (pp. [5v]–[10r]) of most of the first half of the episode (see U
11.98–540) at this stage of its draft development; and 2) a disparate collection of
fragments (pp. [10r]–[14r] and the loose sheet) that Joyce variously incorporated into the
next extant draft of ‘Sirens’ and elsewhere.
This ‘Sirens’ manuscript is the earliest extant draft to feature Leopold Bloom and
include references to Molly Bloom (but only in the second part of the draft).60
Presumably, before beginning the ‘Sirens’ portion of the manuscript, Joyce also compiled
a list of notes based on an as yet undetermined Homeric source on its final page (p.
[14v]).
An Earlier Proto-Draft of ‘Proteus’: (MS 36,639/07/A)
The manuscript is composed of seventeen discrete textual fragments (on nine pages) that
are almost all separated from one another by horizontal lines of Xs or asterisks.61 Joyce
probably compiled these fragments (or composed this draft) after mid October 1917 in
Locarno, Switzerland, and subsequently wrote the next surviving draft of the episode
(Buffalo MS V.A.3) from late October to December 1917. The only known note-source
for this text is the Early Ulysses ‘Subject’ Notebook (NLI MS 36,639/03; see above), but
there were almost certainly also other note-sources that Joyce relied on to write and
revise these texts. As the entries from the ‘Subject’ notebook are part of the main text of
the draft throughout (rather than just marginal or interlineal additions), it is likey that
Joyce actually used these notes on some missing preceding versions of these discrete
58
See http://library.buffalo.edu/pl/collections/jamesjoyce/catalog/va3.htm; JJA 12.238–
58.
59
See http://library.buffalo.edu/pl/collections/jamesjoyce/catalog/va5.htm; JJA 13.32–56.
60
The discovery of this manuscript was the impetus for my current project, Becoming the
Blooms.
61
Fragments 6 and 7 are not separated by Xs, presumably because there was no room at
the bottom of p. [2r], but clearly they are distinct textual fragments. The number of Xs
Joyce used varies but that does not seem to be significant.
26
fragmentary texts, which he must have written (or more likely revised) just before writing
this version.
Furthermore, although the texts are revised currente calamo, interlineally, as well
as in the margins, the appearance of the basic text-fragments in this manuscript suggests
that Joyce copied each fragment as such from another written source (or more likely
several other sources), rather than writing them directly from word- or phrase-based notes
for the first time.
Joyce probably had some other assortment of texts along with this manuscript that
together comprised the episode as it then was in early October 1917, but whether these
texts resembled this kind of manuscript, or whether there was another, more cohesive
narrative draft into which these fragments were to be incorporated is not known, though I
believe that the later possibility is less likely. Also, another draft (or drafts) probably
intervened between this manuscript and the next surviving draft of this episode, although
no other early manuscript is known to be extant.
Based on the various ways these fragments were incorporated in the subsequent
extant draft, it can be argued that Joyce generally used these fragments in three kinds of
ways: 1) as integral, epiphany-like set-pieces that remained quite similar on the
subsequent extant manuscript;62 2) as isolated fragments that were substantially altered
and expanded from this manuscript to Buffalo MS V.A.3;63 and 3) as individual
fragments that were combined to form a longer narrative scene on the later manuscript.64
In general, it seems almost certain that Joyce must have written all these integrated
texts out together somewhere else before they appeared on the next extant draft because
(although most of the corresponding texts are basically similar between the two
manuscripts) there are several more texts that Joyce probably would not have written in
such a relatively unrevised manner on MS V.A.3 for the first time. These are significant
blocks of text that first appear on the later manuscript, including the opening (U 3.1–29)
and a long early section (U 3.120–208), which among many other scenes includes
Stephen’s description of his epiphanies, both of which have the distinct appearance in MS
V.A.3 of having been written before (possibly more than once) and copied there.
This manuscript has been controversial since it was first discovered in 2002 and
Daniel Ferrer’s pioneering essay in the JJQ has been central to the debate.65 Ferrer rightly
claims that it ‘is quite unlike anything in the published text or elsewhere in the archive’
(p. 54). Although my understanding of the status of the ‘Proteus’ section in this
manuscript differs from Ferrer’s, there is not enough (internal or external) evidence to
62
For example, see the visit with Uncle Richie (U 3.70–103 on p. [2v]) as well as the
midwives scene (U 3.29–44 on [3v]).
63
See U 3.271–81 and 3.286–9 (on p. [1r]), 3.107–24 and 3.48–52 (on p. [2r]), 3.303–9
(on p. [4r]), 3.313 & 316–30 (on p. [4v]) and 3.406–18 on (pp. [4v–5r]).
64
For example, see Stephen’s recollections of Paris waking and of ^<Joe> Kevin^ Egan
(U 3.209–57) that is composed of two distinct fragments (on pp. [5r], [3r] and [3v] that
are separated by two pages, the latter fragment preceding the first text in this manuscript).
65
‘What Song the Sirens Sang … Is No Longer Beyond All Conjecture: A Preliminary
Description of the New ‘Proteus’ and ‘Sirens’ Manuscripts’, JJQ Vol. 39, No. 1 (Fall
2001), pp. 53–67. See also Sam Slote’s essay in GJS Issue 5 (Spring 2005), Epiphanic
‘Proteus’.
27
resolve the debate at present. Ferrer presents the crux of the debate about the nature of
this manuscript as follows:
The fragmentary nature of these short segments is surprising and raises an

important question. Is it simply the accidental appearance of a composition in
process, a succession of passages that Joyce wrote in this copybook? Or is it a
stylistic device reflecting a deliberate aesthetic choice, a mode of presentation that
was later discarded in favor of a different option? (p. 55)
Ferrer suggests that it is the latter, while I believe it is the former. I would argue that this
manuscript is a transitory collection of blocks of text, based on previously written
material (possibly in more than one manuscript or on disparate sheets of paper) that Joyce
merely consolidated in this document. I maintain that this manuscript served as a
temporary repository for these discrete textual fragments on their way towards a more
fully elaborated draft (presumably some form of narrative draft that preceded MS V.A.3),
along with other texts in some form.66 These other ‘Proteus’ texts could either have been
another collection of textual fragments like these (on loose sheets or in a copybook) or
possibly a (partial though more fully-elaborated narrative) draft into which these texts
were meant to fit.
Ferrer argues that, ‘[a]esthetically, the episode makes perfect sense in this
fragmented form. The poetic prose of Stephen’s musings is, in a way, even better set off
than in the final version. The underlying narrative is at least as easy to follow, starting as
it does with Stephen’s decision not to go back to the tower and alternating observations
of what he sees around him on the strand, reminiscences, fantasies, and speculations.’
(pp. 55–6). Such an ‘aesthetic’ argument is subjective and certainly founded more on
Ferrer’s thorough and nuanced understanding of Joyce’s later stylistic innovations in
Ulysses (as well as more obviously in Finnegans Wake),67 than on the historical, material,
and textual evidence provided by this manuscript. Then, Ferrer continues, ‘The episode
does seem truncated: it is certainly odd that it would end with the waking of Paris’ (p.
56).
It seems unwarranted to look for a narrative in these discrete textual fragments
since either by the time Joyce had assembled these fragments here or quite shortly
thereafter in the next extant manuscript, he had determined the bare narrative of
‘Proteus’.68 As we know, it is simple enough: Stephen walks along Sandymount Strand,
66
In this respect they resemble all of the extant ‘Cyclops’ manuscripts (Buffalo MS
V.A.8 and NLI 36,639/10), the later portion of the early ‘Sirens’ draft (MS 36,639/07/B),
as well as the early ‘Ithaca’ manuscript (NLI MS 36,639/13), for example.
67
Such as the fragmentary narrative style and typographical layout of the ‘Wandering
Rocks’ episode. Joyce claimed he composed the Rosenbach draft of this episode from
‘notes’ that may even have resembled these fragments. But Joyce wrote that episode at
least one year later and after Ulysses had undergone significant elaboration.
68
David Hayman’s description of Joyce’s ‘piecemeal or mosaic’ method of composition
on ‘Work in Progress’/Finnegans Wake seems particularly applicable to this draft of
‘Proteus’. He writes that this method ‘was useful when the passage depended more
heavily upon ornament and logic than upon plot development. Working from some sort
28
writes a short poem, considers stopping by his Uncle’s home in Strasburg Terrace but
decides not to, and everything else happens in Stephen’s imagination. The associative
elements and transitions that bind the episode’s narrative in the next draft version (and
then in the published texts) are completely absent here, and it is primarily through our
understanding of their relationship in the subsequent versions that some cohesive sense
can be ascribed to the fragments. Rather, it seems more likely (although, admittedly, the
internal evidence does not support this claim any more than it does Ferrer’s) that in this
manuscript Joyce was simply gathering textual elements that he knew would be
components of a draft, with the typical self-assurance that he could arrange and fill in the
transitional material as needed when he set about composing the narrative form of the
draft.
Famously, Joyce would later claim that he worked both as a ‘scissors and paste’
man and ‘engineer’ and here we have an early example of the artist and technician’s
tools. This manuscript may simply seem unique because it is the earliest and most
extreme example of this kind of Ulysses manuscript that has come to light. Besides the
early ‘Sirens’, ‘Cyclops’, and ‘Ithaca’ manuscripts, the more complete textual history of
the earliest drafts of chapters of Finnegans Wake suggest that it was a common practice
for Joyce to gather fragments and then assemble (or re-assemble) them when the time
came to produce a narrative. I would argue that this manuscript is a natural component of
the continuum of Joyce’s writing methods from notes to fragments and then on towards a
narrative draft. They function like Joyce’s ‘epiphanies’ that he mined for virtually all of
his works.69 Therefore, these ‘Proteus’ fragments, though much further developed,
written in a clearer hand, and more textually stable, are also generically similar to the
‘Sirens’ fragments at the end of this manuscript and its loose sheet (see below).
A further interesting issue is the relationship of this manuscript to the next extant
draft. It seems unlikely that this NLI ‘Proteus’ manuscript was the direct precedent of the
Buffalo manuscript, even in conjunction with other manuscripts of this kind or else a
more comprehensive draft of the episode of which this manuscript was a supplement. The
text in this manuscript begins with Stephen’s vision of the scene in the Martello Tower in
Sandycove after he had left and his final decision not to sleep there that night. On the
later manuscript, this fragment is rearranged, expanded, and embedded in a longer and
more developed narrative that precedes it, suggesting that it was based on a draft version
Joyce wrote in between this NLI manuscript and MS V.A.3. Interestingly, on the later
manuscript, Joyce reverted to earlier readings that he had revised here. On the later
manuscript, this scene is followed by a transitional intermediary paragraph (U 3.282–5),
of rough plan or at least from a coherent concept, Joyce wrote a series of unintegrated
passages which, when their number was significant, he organized into a unit’. David
Hayman, A First Draft Version of ‘Finnegans Wake’, (Austin: University of Texas,
1963), p. 13.
69
Buffalo MSS I.A; see
http://library.buffalo.edu/pl/collections/jamesjoyce/catalog/ia.htm. The rectos and versos
of this manuscript have been reproduced in black and white photo-facsimile on JJA 7.01–
44.The manuscripts were published first in Epiphanies, edited by Oscar A. Silverman,
with introduction and notes (Buffalo, New York: University of Buffalo, 1956; and
reprinted in 1979 [Snyder, New York: Richard West]).
29
which is a mixture of first and third person narration that is completely absent on this
earlier manuscript. Then, after some revision on the later manuscript, the text is virtually
identical to its appearance in the published versions in The Little Review and Ulysses.
The section below this in the manuscript follows next in MS V.A.3 as well (and
this may not be coincidental). The scene describes the appearance of the dog’s carcass by
the edge of the sea and Stephen’s musings on language. Although some of the passage is
already present in this manuscript, it is both changed and further developed to a point that
suggest that another draft may have intervened between the two extant versions. Another
fairly substantial section is missing from this draft but is present in large measure on MS
V.A.3 (U 3.291–303). What follows marks the first instance where a fragment from a
later page is integrated into the text of MS V.A.3 (or whatever may have intervened
between the two extant drafts). The next section (U 3.303–6) comes from p. [4r] in this
manuscript. Although it is in a fairly rudimentary state here, the way in which Joyce
elaborated it on the later manuscript is remarkably similar to its published form. On the
other hand, U 3.48–52 is significantly altered and embedded in the text in MS V.A.3.
Finally, if (as is most likely) Joyce had written other texts destined for ‘Proteus’ by the
time he compiled the texts in this manuscript, it is not clear why he did not fill the
remaining pages of this manuscript with those texts.
An Early Partial Draft of ‘Sirens’
The first part of MS 36,639/07/B/1 is a partial early draft of the ‘Sirens’ episode (pp.
[5v]–[10r]). It is followed directly by discrete fragments of text (not all of which were
used for this episode; on pp. [10r]–[14r]), and there is also a related loose leaf of paper
with further fragments that is part of this draft stage (NLI MS 36,639/07/B/2). Finally,
the last page of the copybook (p. [14v]) contains notes headed ‘Lacedemon’ that may or
may not be specifically related to either draft in the copybook. As we saw with the
notebooks, Joyce may have simply used the last page of this copybook as a convenient
place to record general notes, some of which he crossed through in blue crayon, though it
is difficult to ascertain how he used them in Ulysses.
Like the preceding ‘Proteus’ draft in this copybook, this portion of the manuscript
is astounding in its own fashion. Quite surprisingly, this draft confirms that ‘Sirens’ was
one of the earliest episodes of Ulysses Joyce wrote.70 This portion of the copybook
contains the earliest extant draft of most of the first half of the published episode (U
11.98–540), though the text is in a considerably different state than the next extant
version of this part of episode (and therefore is also quite different from how it appears in
Ulysses). Joyce wrote this draft in a clear and continuous manner and in a particularly
neat hand that is well laid out on the page; the text is not crowded and there is ample
70
Although this manuscript is composed of at least two distinct parts, Joyce nonetheless
numbered the entire ‘Sirens’ section of the copybook continuously as pp. ‘1’–‘18’; the
final page (with the Homeric notes) is unnumbered; and the loose leaf is foliated as p.
’20’. These facts indicate that Joyce had probably already compiled the last page of notes
before he started this draft, and that another page of the draft (what must have been p.
‘19’) is still missing. It is also possible that further loose pages of this draft stage
followed p. ‘20’.
30
space between the lines of text. This suggests that Joyce was copying from a fairly well
developed, earlier draft. Besides the arrangement of the text on the pages, the fact that he
was using versos and rectos sequentially also suggests that this section was not a first
draft of this material.71
The narrative of the first part of the episode is a fairly straightforward description
of the scene at the Ormond Bar, with dialogue, and some musical elements, but little of
the psychological depth readers expect from ‘Sirens’. The ‘fugal’ (or varied contrapuntal)
narrative style of the episode as it is known from later versions of the episode—where
events occurring in different places and the various thoughts of the characters are
rendered simultaneously—is not evident at this draft stage. On the other hand, the latter
portion of the manuscript, which is comprised of a variety of fragments (of descriptive
scenes, dialogue, and interior monologue) marks the multi-faceted beginnings of the
episode’s stylistic breakthrough.
This draft exhibits Joyce’s usual, subsequent revisions and marginal additions. He
substantially and significantly revised almost all of the text in this portion of the
manuscript both in ink and in pencil, which indicates several rounds of revision and
expansion. Joyce’s revisions of the opening of ‘Sirens’ are particularly illuminating and
are exemplary of the stylistic transformation of the episode in general. He wrote at least
several sentences, some dialogue (and probably more of this page and possibly still
more), but then revised it, only slowly establishing the opening as it appears in Ulysses.
Joyce described both barmaids’ heads as ‘bronze’ at first, but then changed Miss Douse’s
(she is not yet ‘Miss Douce’ as we know her in Ulysses) hair colour to ‘gold’. He then
rewrote the entire opening to start with the well-known ‘Bronze by gold’, switched the
order of the barmaids’ names to coincide with the newer description, and specifically
reinforced the aural sense over the visual (presumably for stylistic reasons).
The story at the Ormond Hotel here begins with the banter between the barmaids
as they watch the viceregal cavalcade go by the blinds of the barroom down the quays.
The young women’s overt sexuality seems to be the most basic point of the scene so far.
Then, quite early on in this version of the events, Simon Dedalus makes his first
appearance on the stage of Ulysses as he walks into the Ormond bar preening his ‘rocky
thumbnails’. Lenehan enters next and asks whether Boylan has been in looking for him;
this is the first mention of Blazes Boylan in any surviving document for Ulysses, but
obviously Joyce had already established his role as Molly’s suitor, presumably several
years before.
Blazes enters the Ormond and all the attention turns to him as he tells them of
Bantam Lyon’s tip for the Ascot Gold Cup race. He is overly concerned about the time,
not just because of the race results, but because he has an ‘appointment he can’t miss’.
Lenehan presses Miss Douce to snap her garter, which she does reluctantly but with the
purpose of attracting Boylan’s attention. Boylan throws back his drink and sets off with
71
Based on the way in which Joyce used the pages in other, later copybooks, he usually
started by only using the rectos when writing the main text of first or earlier drafts,
reserving the versos for additional texts. Generally, it is only when he thought a text had
reached a relatively stable state that he would use the recto-verso-recto pages
sequentially, like here. Of course, this manuscript proves that Joyce can be quite mistaken
about the relative stability of his work.
31
Lenehan trailing close behind. So far this follows the action of the published versions of
‘Sirens’, though much is also missing.
Ben Dollard and Bob Cowley then enter the Ormond discussing the rent Cowley
owes his landlord and then Simon convinces Dollard to sing. The song ‘Love and War’
brings up memories of the past and specifically a particular night when the song was
played. At first Joyce wrote that Father Cowley was the pianist but almost immediately
he changed this to ‘poor old Goodwin’ and Simon comments ‘a nice hash he made of it’.
As far as we know, Joyce had not yet written the other references to Goodwin’s concert
in the earlier episodes so this may be a new idea for Ulysses.
Next, Father Cowley recalls the night as well and asks about a certain ‘Marie
Fallon’. Unknown to readers of Ulysses, Joyce quickly changed her name to ‘Marie
Powell’. Now the name Powell immediately connects this Dublin prima donna to the
stories of Ulysses because ‘Major’ Malachy Powell was one of the sources for Major
Brian Tweedy, Molly’s father. So now with just a change of name a very significant
storyline begins to emerge.
At this point Joyce made several pivotal changes: he added a reference to the song
lyric ‘My Irish Molly O’ that he connected with another bit of information about ‘a
soldier’s daughter ^from rock of Gibraltar^’. Only now does Molly, who is also described
as ‘a buxom piece’, become the main subject of the men’s conversation. It is interesting
to note how much of Molly’s background was already fixed in place at this relatively
early stage. Of course, some of it has to do with the real life prototypes of Molly Tweedy,
but what is notable is the way in which the various threads are grouped together and are
only slowly disentangled as Joyce kept writing ‘Sirens’.
It was not the case that Joyce was simply conflating Josie Powell and Molly
because Joyce had fixed on Molly (or ‘Mollie’) as a main character in Ulysses by at least
1917 when the notebook that served as source for this draft was compiled. Molly is
distinctly mentioned in another addition on this page, when Bloom notes that she ‘has a
devil of a quick eye to notice if anyone is looking at her’. Then Cowley asks: ‘what
became of her Simon? I never see her name is she still alive’. Simon replies that she is
indeed ‘alive and kicking’ but that she has married.
What is most interesting here is that these additions mark the end of the
continuous draft of ‘Sirens’. Joyce simply ran out of background information just as
Dollard is about to start his song. The continuous draft state of this manuscript just stops
in the middle of p. [10r]. It is likely that this rupture coincides with the extent of the
earlier draft. Later, Joyce cancelled the phrase ‘a moment’, and replaced it with ‘Half
time’ (obviously intended as a musical term, but it could also have served as a tag
pointing to the second half of the episode as it was then structured, though he did not
follow through with that plan). He drew a line separating everything that came before,
and only then introduced Bloom, already seated alone at the Ormond Hotel.
As Daniel Ferrer was the first to note, the most striking difference between this
draft and all other versions of ‘Sirens’ is that Bloom is completely absent from the first
half of the narrative scene. It might be that at this juncture Joyce planned that ‘Sirens’
would function with two perspectives—much like ‘Nausicaa’ in fact does, though, as far
as we know, Joyce only wrote that episode about a year later—with a Dubliners-like bar
scene with dialogue first, counter-balanced by Bloom’s interior monologue in the second
half of the episode. It is even possible that Joyce could have intended that the second half
32
of the episode would take place at exactly the same time as the first half, more like some
of the interpolations in ‘Wandering Rocks’ rather than the more traditional sequential
timeframe of the episode in ‘Nausicaa’.
The disjunction between the parties at the Ormond is particularly conspicuous in
this version of the scene: there is a convivial crowd at the bar on one side and then there
is Bloom, the outsider, who observes the others ‘in silence’. The manuscript suggests that
the transition to Bloom may have been initiated by Joyce’s addition, ‘My Irish Molly O’.
This is the earliest version of Bloom’s interior monologue we have in any manuscript.
Then, piece-by-piece, phrase-by-phrase, Joyce began to develop the point of view and
thought patterns that are so characteristic of what is commonly (and reductively)
described as Bloom’s perspective: as the open-minded, intellectually curious, ‘modern
hero’. Joyce continued Bloom’s sexualised reverie about the barmaids at the beerpull
here for a few lines and then stopped once again (this scene is all on pp. [10r]–[10v]).
The rest of the manuscript is composed of further, non-consecutive, and even less
cohesive fragments that in general are certainly more similar to the ‘Proteus’ material
than the preceding narrative-portion of this ‘Sirens’ draft.
The physical disposition of the texts in the ‘Sirens’ sections of the manuscript
allows us to refine the date of its composition. Firstly, since both parts follow the
‘Proteus’ fragments in the copybook, they must obviously have been written after Joyce
had written them, so after mid October 1917. As with the ‘Proteus’ portion of the
manuscript, notebook usage in these drafts corroborates the end of 1917 as the earliest
date for the composition of both parts of the ‘Sirens’ portion of the copybook. Joyce used
several clusters of notes from the Early Ulysses Subject Notebook (NLI MS 36,639/03) to
write the first part of the draft. This indicates that whatever form the draft may have had
prior to this manuscript, Joyce wrote or revised it with entries from that notebook;
therefore, we have further proof that he did so after mid October 1917 when that
notebook was compiled. He also returned to it for further entries for the second part of
the ‘Sirens’ portion of the copybook.
Joyce was busy writing the Rosenbach faircopy drafts of ‘Telemachus’ and
‘Nestor’ from October through November 1917 and he had certainly finished writing the
next surviving ‘Proteus’ draft (Buffalo MS V.A.3) by mid December that year. Given all
of his work on the ‘Telemachiad’ (although we do not have sufficient evidence one way
or the other), it is unlikely that Joyce was also able to write a completely non-Stephen
related episode at this time as well. It is not known how much more time elapsed between
the writing of the ‘Proteus’ fragments on the previous page ([5r]) and Joyce’s work on
‘Sirens’, but the evidence suggests Joyce began writing this earliest version of ‘Sirens’ at
the start of 1918 at the earliest.
In his James Joyce and the Beginnings of ‘Ulysses’, Rodney Wilson Owen
presciently wrote ‘that the first third of ‘Sirens’ was earlier and more complete than the
rest’ (JJBU 67). Furthermore, Owen states that although he is
not trying to argue that the first section of ‘Sirens’ was actually drafted before
Joyce left Trieste in 1915; one would suppose, though, that the notebook [Buffalo
MS V.A.2.a] correspondence and relative lack of later additions to the first section
indicate that Simon’s flirtation with the barmaids, his piano playing, and the
presence of both Bloom and Blazes Boylan, were part of the original nucleus of the
33
episode, and as such might have existed in Trieste in a short sketch, an outline, or a
compilation of notes. (JJBU 67)
This manuscript provides clear evidence that Owen’s intuition was astoundingly accurate:
Joyce must have written a very early version of most of the first half of the episode
between 1915 and 1917 and it (and possibly other drafts) preceded this manuscript.72
Joyce used the Early Ulysses Subject Notebook (NLI MS 36,639/03) to develop
key descriptions of Simon Dedalus, Lydia Douse, Mina Kennedy, and Leopold Bloom.
Joyce first integrated an entry from the ‘Subject’ notebook into a relatively well-
elaborated exchange about Miss Douse’s sunburn and Miss Kennedy’s remedy (on p.
[6r]; tellingly, it appears under the heading ‘Recipes’ on p. [4r] of the notebook). The text
also clearly appears to have been drafted previously elsewhere. Joyce then used entries
from the very start of the ‘Subject’ notebook (taken from notes under the heading
‘Simon’ on p. [1r]) to describe the elder Dedalus’ telltale gesture as he enters the Ormond
Bar (see U 11.192–3). This scene occurs on p. [7r] of the manuscript. Joyce then used
another entry to describe the manner with which Miss Douse serves Simon Dedalus:
‘With the greatest alacrity’ (U 11.213). The entire phrase as such is on the last page of the
‘Subject’ notebook (under the heading ‘Words’ on p. [15v]).73 Another entry from the
‘Subject’ notebook describes Miss Kennedy’s concentrated efforts to continue reading
and so ignore Lenehan. It too was under the heading ‘Words’ and Joyce even tagged it
with Lenehan’s name. Again, the fact that so little of the text can be traced to extant
notebooks suggests that there were other contemporaneous notebooks that Joyce relied on
to write this (and earlier) drafts.
Fragmentary Texts for ‘Sirens’
Unlike the punctilious way Joyce segregated the previous ‘Proteus’ texts from one
another with asterisks, the ‘Sirens’ fragments that comprise the final part of this
copybook here are only sometimes separated from one another, and then only with short,
72
Owen also wrote that, ‘Because the ‘Alphabetical Notebook’ and Giacomo Joyce were
used in Ulysses prior to Joyce’s return to Trieste in 1919, and because they evidently
remained in Trieste since 1915, episodes which used them were likely sketched before
1915’ (JJBU 65). This evidence is less convincing than the developed nature of the text
in this manuscript for the presumption that at least one version of ‘Sirens’ pre-dates this
draft (and so was written before 1917). In fact, only one note from the so-called
‘Alphabetical Notebook’ (Cornell MS 25) appears in this manuscript (on p. [8r]):
‘Mooney sur mer’ (Joyce had noted it under the heading ‘Devin’; see WD, p. 96), but
Joyce could easily have transferred that note to an intermediary notebook or notesheet (or
simply recalled the colloquial name of the pub) and so did not need direct access to that
notebook.
73
As part of the stylistic overhaul the episode had undergone, on the next draft Joyce
echoed the phrase (see MS 36,639/09, p. [3r]) just as it appears in Ulysses (11.214) and
then on the Rosenbach manuscript Joyce repeated it a third time (now as a noun: U
11.217). Interestingly, none of these repetitions are indicated as additions in either of the
extant drafts.
34
hastily-drawn horizontal lines. This suggests that these later fragments were much less
developed; in fact, their physical appearance indicates that Joyce was writing some of
these texts here for the first time. Later, Joyce (as usual) crossed out with Xs in different
coloured crayons the text-blocks he was incorporating in the next draft of ‘Sirens’ or was
transferring elsewhere. Interestingly, although Joyce used some of the blue-crossed-
through texts in ‘Sirens’, others appear in ‘Lestrygonians’, in ‘Cyclops’, and even later in
‘Circe’ (the latter two uses at least came about via intermediary texts). It is likely that
after Joyce had written the next draft of ‘Sirens’ (NLI MS 36,639/09 and Buffalo MS
V.A.5 together), he returned to this manuscript and transferred the unused fragments to
other repositories and from there they ended up in those other episodes of Ulysses.
For example, the first full fragment on p. [10v] is just one of several snatches of
malicious (specifically male Dublin pub) gossip about Bloom and Molly that appears in
this manuscript, but Joyce actually ended up using it as a scene in ‘Cyclops’ (see U
12.1566–9). Based on the state of the ‘Cyclops’ drafts that survive and other interpretive
considerations, I would suggest that Joyce had not yet envisioned what became episode
twelve at this stage (at least as we know it from Ulysses) and that it both materially and
conceptually grew out of Joyce’s continuing elaboration of ‘Sirens’. It could be that
Joyce came to feel that any sort of altercation between Bloom and the other Dubliners at
the Ormond Bar might be psychologically too traumatic an event for Bloom at this
crucial and difficult part of his day. Joyce may also have come to realise that it was
structurally too complex and demanding from a narrative perspective to have Bloom
confront his repressed feelings as well as confront other men (who somehow seem to
know about Blazes’s impending rendezvous with Molly) all in just one episode. So, as he
elaborated his ever-expanding novel, he shunted off the more aggressive and
confrontational aspects of ‘Sirens’ (focusing instead on its musical and stylistic aspects).
Although they were previously intended as part of just one barroom scene, at some later
stage Joyce decided that the various external disputes would happen later in the day in
another episode and elsewhere.74
The next fragment (also on p. [10v]) describes the coincidence of Simon Dedalus
singing an aria from Martha as Bloom is about to write to his own ‘Martha Clifford’.
Joyce incorporated the textual fragments on p. [11r] both to fill in what he had already
written as well as continue the narrative in the next version. The first fragment describes
the Blooms in Holles Street, when he had lost his job at Hely’s and ‘Mrs Marion Bloom’
sold used clothes. It ends with Simon’s witty comment that Molly has ‘left off clothes of
all descriptions’. Another fragment describes Bloom’s sympathetic, though ironic,
attention to Richie Goulding’s poor health and finances. The first mentions of the Blooms
coming to Ben Dollard’s rescue by getting him a dress suit for his concert occur as
marginal additions.
The next short fragment Joyce squeezed in the middle of p. [11v] is also
exemplary of the stylistic innovations the episode underwent in this draft on its way to
Ulysses. Joyce had tagged this fragment with the overt stage direction ‘(He thought)’, but
by simply though determinedly crossing it out, Joyce’s text plunges the reader into
Bloom’s thought processes as he ponders his life. He wonders: ‘If she then I would be
different then. But she has? Or has she?’ That is, Bloom asks himself how would their
74
A more detailed and expanded version of this argument is forthcoming.
35
lives be different if Molly did not keep her rendezvous with Boylan? Tellingly,
afterwards, Joyce dispersed and dissimulated this crucial scene in various other episodes
of Ulysses, presumably because it could not be part of ‘Sirens’ for the same sort of
psychological and structural reasons I alluded to above. I would argue that given the
importance of this question for Bloom that day, such a direct, unqualified statement of his
fears as a husband, father, and as a man, would simply have been out of place in ‘Sirens’
once Joyce had written more of the Bloom-oriented episodes in the first half of Ulysses.
On the other hand, such a complex and conflicted scenario does make sense from the
perspective of ‘Circe’, but Joyce only started elaborating the later episode over a year
later in mid 1920 (as far as we know).
Several of the fragments here are explicitly from a narrator’s, third-person
perspective on Bloom in the Ormond, describing Bloom’s observations and thoughts.
But, in the additional text in the margins, Joyce slowly but surely developed and refined
Bloom’s interior monologue; he began to explore the workings of Bloom’s mind and to
present them directly to the reader, thereby giving ‘Sirens’ the immediacy that is a
hallmark of Ulysses.
More fundamentally, this part of the ‘Sirens’ manuscript demonstrates that Joyce
initiated some of the other experimental aspects of Ulysses much earlier than scholars of
the genesis of Ulysses had presumed; that is, in 1917 rather than in 1919. For example,
the central fragment on p. [12r] presents Bloom’s disjointed, half-articulated, but
coherent thoughts as he recognizes a pun on chamber music, tries to formulate his own
‘science’ of acoustics, thinks of Listz’s Hungarian Rhapsodies, and then composes a
musical arrangement for urine tinkling into a chamber pot: ‘Diddleiddle addleaddle
ooddleooddle’.
Joyce wrote most of the fragments for the ending of ‘Sirens’ on p. [12v], but not
in a sequential order. They alternate between scenes after Bloom has left the Ormond and
Ben Dollard has sung The Croppy Boy. At the bottom of the page Joyce explored
Bloom’s thoughts about the man who first discovered drums. This prompts him to think
about the asses’ ‘point of view’: they are beasts of burden in life and then their skins are
used for the drums. Bloom then tries to recall the Arabic word ‘Kismet’ (‘Fate’) but he
confuses it with ‘backsheesh’ (‘gratuity’), rather than the word ‘yashmak’ (the veil worn
by Muslim women in public) that readers know from Ulysses.
Joyce wrote the first known version of the finale of ‘Sirens’ on the top half of p.
[13r], even though two more pages of fragments follow. The first fragment begins with
the ‘frowsy whore’ Bloom wants to avoid (which Joyce also took from entries in the
‘Subject’ notebook, under the heading ‘Leopold’), then Joyce wove together the closing
words of Robert Emmet’s speech and, in the margins, Bloom’s analysis of the causes of
his gas: ‘must be the cider or the Burgan.’ and, finally, ‘Let my epitaph be written. I have.
Bfffffff Done.’
The various fragmentary texts that began on the lower half of p. [10r] and follow
in this part of the manuscript are difficult to separate from one another at this draft stage
and even harder to place as such in the much more developed next draft stage and so in
Ulysses. Joyce himself did not always separate the texts with horizontal lines, and even
those texts that he wrote as units here he broke up and dispersed at the next extant draft
level. It is likely that in this part of the manuscript Joyce was simply collecting some
previously written, isolated texts, as well as writing new texts, all without a clear sense of
36
where they would fit into the episode. Obviously, Joyce’s sense of the episode as a whole
changed radically from this stage to the next.
The transition from this draft stage to the next (see below) is a crucial moment in
the evolution of Ulysses. As this episode developed, Joyce presumably realized two
major points that altered the course of Ulysses. On the one hand (at a later stage after
writing the first part of this draft), Joyce realised that the one-sided approach to ‘Sirens’
was too simplistic for such a pivotal episode in the work, possibly because it isolated
Bloom too obviously at this delicate juncture of the day. Also, Joyce must have realized
that it was precisely the musical style of the episode that would allow Bloom to be both
on the margins (both structurally and socially) of what was happening in the Ormond and
yet not completely cut-off from human camaraderie.
[back to top]
Complete Earlier Draft of ‘Scylla and Charybdis’: 1918

(MSS 36,639/08/A–C)
This draft consists of three separate copybooks; they contain a continuous text, which
together comprise the earliest extant complete draft of the episode. Joyce wrote this draft
in early to mid 1918 and had finished the next extant version of the episode (the
Rosenbach manuscript) on ‘New Year’s Eve | 1918’.75
Along with ‘Proteus’ (NLI MS 36,639/07/A and then Buffalo MS V.A.3) and
‘Sirens’ (MS 36,639/07/B), ‘Scylla and Charybdis’ was one of the earliest episodes for
Ulysses Joyce conceived and presumably wrote.76 He had gathered some of the elements
he would subsequently use for the start of this episode as early as 1903–4 in the Early
Commonplace Book: 1903–12 (NLI MS 36,639/02/A), although it is unlikely that he
needed to consult that manuscript for those precise phrases when he actually wrote this
episode.77
It is probable that Joyce considered including a scene that takes place at the
National Library in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, but there are no relevant
documents that would confirm this hypothesis.78 On 9 April 1917, Joyce wrote to Ezra
Pound, ‘[a]s regards excerpts from Ulysses, the only thing I could send is the Hamlet
chapter, or part of it––which, however, would suffer by excision’ (LI 101). What form the
episode may have had at this stage is not known, but it was almost certainly an earlier
draft or proto-draft of the episode that is now lost (see below).
75
See the colour reproduction of the Rosenbach ‘Scylla and Charybdis’ manuscript, f.
‘37’ in Ulysses: A Facsimile of the Manuscript, volume I (New York: Octagon Books,
1975).
76
Although all of their early drafts are missing, Joyce certainly had written parts of
‘Telemachus’, ‘Nestor’, and ‘Hades’ by 1917.
77
The ‘Monsieur de la Palice’ and the ‘[…] brave medicals […]’ entries appear on pp.
[18v] and [24v].
78
See Hans Walter Gabler, ‘The Rocky Road to Ulysses’, Joyce Studies 2004, Number
15, edited by Luca Crispi and Catherine Fahy (Dublin: The National Library of Ireland,
2005), particularly pp. 26–9.
37
As is often the case, Joyce’s notebook usage helps date this draft. The earliest notes
Joyce compiled and then used in this draft are from the so-called ‘Alphabetical
Notebook’ (Cornell MS 25).79 It dates from 1910 and Joyce first used it to write A
Portrait, but then he used other notes from it to write several early drafts of Ulysses,
including ‘Scylla and Charybdis’. Entries from that notebook—from under the heading
‘Stephen’, obviously enough—appear both as part of the main text and as additions on
this manuscript.80 Joyce also used entries from the ‘Subject’ notebook (NLI MS
36,639/03)—from both the headings ‘Theosophy’ and ‘Words’—to write the main text
and make additions on various pages of this draft.81 Joyce also compiled several sets of
notes for the episode at the end of this draft (see MS 36,639/08/C, p. [12r]) and used them
here, but notably only for additions to the text, which suggests that he compiled the list
after he had finished at least a first round of writing this draft.82
What we presume was an earlier manuscript of this episode was part of the La
Hune ‘James Joyce’ Exhibition and auction in Paris in 1948. It was part of the collection
acquired by the University at Buffalo (as it is now called), but it did not arrive in Buffalo
with the other La Hune Joyce material in 1950.83 What became of that manuscript is not
known and it has never reappeared. The La Hune catalogue describes it as:
CHARYBDE ET SCYLLA. / (Neuvième episode) 10 grandes feuilles de papier

blanc uni, manuscrit à l’encre uniquement recto. Fragments de conversations qui
réapparaissent, sous une forme très différente, dans la scène de la Bibliothèque.
Nombreuses marques au crayon rouge.84
79
Sometime between 1916 and 1918, Joyce compiled a notebook (Buffalo MS V.A.4; see
http://library.buffalo.edu/pl/collections/jamesjoyce/catalog/va4.htm), which he labelled
‘Shakespeare | Dates’. As the title indicates, it is composed of notes on the life of William
Shakespeare from 1593 to 1616; each of the twenty four pages covers one year (except
for 1612) and was compiled from Sidney Lee’s works on Shakespeare. This notebook is
not textually related to this draft. The manuscript has been reproduced in black and white
photo-facsimile on JJA 12.323–348 and Richard M. Kain transcribed it in ‘James Joyce’s
Shakespeare Chronology’,"Massachusetts Review Vol. 5, No. 2 (1964), pp. 342–55.
Also, see Rodney Wilson Owen’s incisive treatment of this manuscript and its relation to
A Portrait and the ‘Scylla and Charybdis’ episode in JJBU 91–2.
80
It is possible that by 1917 Joyce had already transferred it to another note-repository
and its draft usage here does not come directly from Cornell MS 25; see WD 95.
81
The notes come from pp. [7r], [7v], and p. [15v], the final page in the notebook.
82
In 2009 Ronan Crowley discovered that these notes came from Alexander
Schmidt, Shakespeare-Lexicon: A Complete Dictionary of All the English Words,
Phrases and Constructions in the Works of the Poet. 3rd. ed. rev. and enl. by Gregor
Sarrazin. Vol. II. M-Z (Berlin: Reimer, 1902).
83
See also Peter Spielberg (compiler), James Joyce’s Manuscripts and Letters at the
University at Buffalo (Buffalo: University at Buffalo, 1962), p. vii.
84
Bernard Gheerbrant, James Joyce: Sa Vie, Son Œuvre, Son Rayonnement (Paris:
Librairie La Hune, 1949), n.p., item 254. See also John J. Slocum and Herbert Cahoon, A
Bibliography of James Joyce 1882-1941 (1953; rpt. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1971),
38
[SCYLLA ET CHARYBDIS. / (Ninth episode) 10 large white unlined sheets of

paper, holograph in ink only on the rectos. Fragments of conversations that
reappear, in a very different form, in the Library episode. Numerous red crayon
markings.]
Interestingly, this description suggests that it was similar to the fragmentary texts in the
newly discovered ‘Proteus’ and ‘Sirens’ manuscript (NLI MS 36,639/07/A–B), which is
further evidence that some of the early drafts were composed from disconnected,
fragmentary textual blocks. Like other writers, Joyce regularly crossed out (usually in
coloured crayons) the text of a draft when he had copied it into another, later document.
This manuscript is unusual because none of the main text on any page is crossed out in
this way. On the other hand, most but not all of the additional texts in the left margins of
the rectos as well as the versos are crossed out in red and sometimes in blue crayon.85 A
possible explanation for this is that this manuscript did not represent the most advanced
textual state of the episode when Joyce was recopying it. If that was the case, then here
he was primarily concerned with incorporating the additions from this manuscript on
some (now missing) subsequent or collateral draft. In general, this suggests that Joyce
worked with several drafts of this episode at different stages of its development
simultaneously (and this may also account for the different ways in which Joyce wrote
out some of the collateral Rosenbach manuscripts, including the one for this episode).
The next extant version of the episode is the Rosenbach manuscript. It is a
demonstrably more advanced (and therefore later) draft stage than this manuscript; that
is, there are many emendations and additions that appear as parts of the main text of the
Rosenbach manuscript that are not present in any recognisable form on this draft. Most
notably, there are several lines as well as blocks of text that are completely absent from
the text of this manuscript but which appear as part of the Rosenbach version of the
episode.86 Therefore, we can postulate at least one (now missing) draft stage between this
manuscript and the Rosenbach version of the episode.
A preliminary collation of the texts on this manuscript and the Rosenbach version
demonstrates (when it is possible to adjudicate between variant readings) that this
manuscript is closer to the text on the Rosenbach manuscript than to the so-called ‘(Lost)
Final Working Draft’ of the episode that produced the extant typescript, particularly for
the first third of the episode.87 The most obvious example is: ‘Do you know what you are
talking about? Love, yes. ^Word known to all men.^ Amor vero aliquid alicui bonum vult
Item 5.b.iii, p. 140. Slocum and Cahoon’s description is based on ‘hasty notes made by
one of the compilers during a private examination of the library in the spring of 1949’.
85
The use of two differently coloured crayons usually indicates that Joyce returned to the
manuscript at various times.
86
The missing texts include the following: U 9.96–9, 9.137–8, 9.158, 9.163, 9.183,
9.221–4, 9.308–13, 9.381–5, 9.506, 9.515, 9.517–21, 9.651–4, 9.674–80, 9.729–30,
9.754–7, 9.889–91, 9.999–1006, and 9.1072–80.
87
See Hans Walter Gabler, with Wolfhard Steppe and Claus Melchior, Ulysses: A
Critical and Synoptic Edition (New York and London: Garland Publishing Inc., 1948,
1986), 3 volumes; especially vol. 3, pp. 1876–82.
39
undea et ea quae concupiscumus’ (U 9.429–31). It appears in the main text (revised as

indicated) on MS 36,639/08/B, p. [2r] and so is identical to the reading on the Rosenbach
manuscript rather than the typescript (and so in most versions of Ulysses).
The precise relationship of this manuscript to the Rosenbach manuscript version of
‘Scylla and Charybdis’ is complicated by the fact that the extant typescript, which in turn
produced both The Little Review text (published in April and May 1919) and the episode
as published in Ulysses, was definitely not produced directly from the Rosenbach
manuscript. The Rosenbach manuscript of this episode is therefore a mixed document,
which is relatively unusual amongst Joyce’s extant manuscripts.88 Furthermore, the
textual evidence suggests that Joyce produced another now missing draft of the episode,
after the Rosenbach manuscript,89 which was then used as the copy text for the extant
typescript. This other (missing) document contained both additional sentences and blocks
of text as well as variant readings that are not present on this manuscript or on the
Rosenbach.
[back to top]
Partial Later Draft of ‘Sirens’: 1919

(MS 36,639/09)
This manuscript is a copybook containing the text of about the first sixty percent of the
‘Sirens’ episode as published in Ulysses (11.01–785). This draft stage is continued
directly on Buffalo MS V.A.5 and concluded there.90 As Michael Groden and Daniel
Ferrer have already noted, the discovery of this portion of what we now know is a later
‘Sirens’ draft did not come as much of a surprise to scholars of the episode for the simple
reason that p. [1r] of the continuation of this draft stage tellingly starts in mid sentence on
p. ‘21’. So it was logical to presume that Joyce had already written twenty pages before
starting the Buffalo manuscript. Although Joyce continued to refine the text at every
subsequent juncture, by this stage the episode had already achieved the formal structure
and thematic characteristics that closely resemble its published instantiations, except for
the extant version of overture at the start, which Joyce probably only wrote after finishing
the rest of the Rosenbach faircopy manuscript.
On the other hand, what is surprising is the radical conceptual and stylistic overhaul
the episode underwent between the newly discovered earlier extant ‘Sirens’ manuscript
(NLI MS 36,639/07/B; see above) and this draft stage. The internal textual evidence is
inconclusive about when and how Joyce refashioned the episode’s (by now)
characteristic style: 1) Joyce could have written this draft directly from the earlier version
(along with further fragments like the ones at the end of NLI MS 36,639/07/B) and
reworked and elaborated them directly here as he wrote this draft; or else 2) Joyce
88
It is likely that the Rosenbach manuscript of the ‘Nausicaa’ and of ‘Oxen of the Sun’
episodes are also a mixed manuscripts, which makes them analogous to the textual states
of this ‘Scylla and Charybdis’ draft and its Rosenbach version.
89
There may have been more than one draft and these may have been manuscripts or
typescripts or both.
90
See http://library.buffalo.edu/pl/collections/jamesjoyce/catalog/va5.htm.
40
consolidated his earlier work and refashioned the episode’s style in a piecemeal manner
in one or more intermediary drafts (now missing), and then simply continued that process
here. The latter possibility is much more likely but not certain.
Here the fixed, continuous narrative from the earlier manuscript version ends on p.
[7v], but is significantly expanded and revised. It is difficult to suppose that Joyce was
able to fluidly recast the entire episode, both in terms of its style and content—from its
quite different and more primitive state in the earlier draft to this later and well-
established version—without positing at least one (but possibly more) intermediate draft
stage(s). While Joyce’s experience of writing the first ten episodes at least to their
‘faircopy’ states may account for the first possibility, I consider that scenario quite
unlikely.
On the one hand, the fluid progress of the narrative in the last five pages of the
copybook clearly suggests that some missing intermediary draft of the whole episode
extended beyond what Joyce had written in 1918, especially since so little of the text can
be traced to the earlier version. On the other hand, the various ways in which Joyce
incorporated the extant fragments from the latter half of the earlier version are
ambiguous. Most of the earlier, distinct fragments are consolidated on p. [8v] in this
draft. Joyce moulded them together mostly as part of the main text from MS 36,639/07/B,
pp. [11v]–[11r]–[11v] (in that order) but, significantly, he also added yet another
fragment from p. [11r] in the left margin of p. [8v]. All of these various fragments were
crossed through in red crayon on the earlier draft and so one would expect that if Joyce
had transferred them all to an intermediary draft, they would all be part of the main text
in this later version.91
Based on the manuscripts that survive, it appears to have been a regular practice for
Joyce to fill the pages of a copybook from recto to verso on later, more stable drafts, but
only on rectos on earlier, more fluid drafts (so that he would have ample room to add
further text on the facing versos). Though there may be other explanations for his choice
here, a notable difference between the ways Joyce used the two copybooks that constitute
this same draft stage is that he wrote on the rectos and versos consecutively on the NLI
manuscript (the start of the episode), but wrote directly from recto to recto (leaving
himself plenty of blank space) on the Buffalo manuscript, reserving the versos for further
additions and revisions. Joyce had in fact written the first third of the episode at least
twice before and presumably he believed it had reached a fixed (though certainly not
final) state. On the other hand, all that survives for the latter portion of the episode before
this draft stage are unconnected fragmentary texts. Still, as we have seen in the earlier
version of ‘Sirens’, Joyce’s confidence in the constancy of his work was sometimes
misplaced.92
91
The episode’s textual history is further complicated by the fact that this draft level
(NLI MSS 36,639/09 and Buffalo MS V.A.5) is not the direct source of the next extant
draft, the Rosenbach manuscript, and that the Rosenbach manuscript was not the source
text for the typescript, which in turn was used for The Little Review, and then after further
revisions for Ulysses as well.
92
Another difference between the draft stages is that, for whatever reason, Joyce named
one of the barmaids both Miss ‘Douse’ and ‘Douce’ on the earlier version but in this draft
she is consistently ‘Miss Douce’.
41
Although most of the narrative and language of the earlier draft remained, as usual
Joyce expanded and reworked much of it. The radical alteration of the conceptual
framework of the episode by this draft stage is immediately evident because Bloom’s
meandering journey along the southside bank of the Liffey to the Ormond has already
been woven into the opening dialogue between the two barmaids. Joyce must have
decided to include the account of Bloom’s arrival at the bar as part of the opening of the
episode before he started writing this draft, though it is interesting to see how
rudimentary Bloom’s itinerary is at this stage (see p. [1r]).93 For example, at first Joyce
simply wrote: ‘Mr Bloom went by —— bearing in his breast pocket the sweets of sin’,
but it was only when he added ‘by Moulang’s pipes’ beside it in the left margin that the
blank become a real Dublin locale.94
Joyce’s other preoccupation here (as it was on the earlier draft and it continued at
every subsequent stage) was the ordering of the phrases he had already decided upon.95
Again from the same paragraph that introduces Bloom in ‘Sirens’ on p. [1r], Joyce first
wrote ‘bearing in his breast pocket the sweets of sin, bearing in his memory sweet sinful
words. For Raoul.’ Unusually, Joyce simply circled the word ‘pocket’ and it does not
appear again; perhaps this is because he began shifting the emphasis here from the
physical to the psychological dimension of the scene; this shift in emphasis is also
evident in the ways Joyce rearranged the order of the phrases. At a later stage, Joyce also
added in the left margin the names of the shop fronts that interrupt Bloom’s sensual
reverie.96
Furthermore, the aquatic ambience of the Ormond is established, for example, with
descriptions that liken the counter of the bar to a ‘reef’ (p. [1v]) and the ‘eau de Nil’
motif Joyce added on p. [1r]. There are also many musical allusions that appear here
already in the text that were not present in the earlier draft and Joyce continued to add
even more. He also reassigned some of the dialogue between the barmaids and Dedalus,
Lenehan and Boylan, but the same kind of character instability was already evident on
93
Although Joyce knew the circuit of Bloom’s itinerary and errands, he added some of
his contrapuntal thoughts in the margins. Similarly, Boylan’s journey to the Ormond and
then on towards Eccles Street is also well developed in this draft. Joyce had also
determined that Bloom would follow Boylan to the Ormond before this draft. Here it
reads: ‘[…] Can’t see me there. […] Still be near and hear: At four.’ (p. [5r]).
94
Presumably, this happened after Joyce had found the factual detail he needed among
his notes or elsewhere: the shop was actually located at 31 Wellington Quay.
95
The following are typical examples of Joyce’s method: ‘^<That fellow is most
aggravating> Most aggravating that fellow is^.’ and ‘^<His dark eyes went by by Bassi’s
blessed virgins,> by Bassi’s blessed virgins, his dark eyes went by^’ (both on p. [2r]).
Joyce’s rearrangement of the same phrases in different orders was already conspicuous
on the earlier draft, but became more intense here and continued at every subsequent
level.
96
Interestingly, whether purposefully or not, the order in which Bloom would have
passed the shop fronts is inverted here and remains so in each subsequent version and in
Ulysses. See Thom’s 1904, pp. 1615–6; as well Ian Gunn and Clive Hart with Harald
Beck, James Joyce’s Dublin: A Topographical Guide to the Dublin of ‘Ulysses’ (London:
Thames and Hudson, 2004), p. 120.
42
the earlier draft; this issue requires further examination in ‘Sirens’ and in Ulysses more
generally.
This manuscript also documents another transformation of the episode that is as
momentous as it is problematic: the imposition of the so-called ‘fugal’ structure on the
episode and the development of the episode’s overture.97 Although the conceptual note
on p. [1r]: ‘Repeat | episodes | phrases’ signals the origin of the overture, its first extant
version is as part of the Rosenbach manuscript.
[back to top]
Scenes and Fragmentary Texts for ‘Cyclops’: June 1919

(MS 36,639/10)
This manuscript contains at least four relatively lengthy, isolated scenes (mostly
parodies), the episode’s new opening, several unconnected fragmentary texts, as well as,
unusually, an exchange of comic notes between James and Nora Joyce. Michael Groden
postulated the existence of this copybook in his pivotal 1977 study of the evolution of the
episode in ‘Ulysses’ in Progress.98 Its discovery confirms many of Groden’s insights and
conclusions.99 Naturally, it will also prompt further research and discussion of Joyce’s
creative methods and the several transformations Ulysses underwent in what Groden has
designated as the ‘middle stage’ of the genesis of the work; this brief analysis is just one
step in that direction.
As in the earlier ‘Sirens’ manuscript (NLI 36,639/07/B), presumably here too Joyce
was compiling previously written distinct and fragmentary scenes and writing new
fragmentary texts without a clear sense of how he would integrate this material into a
continuous narrative of the episode.100 In his discussion of Buffalo MS V.A.8—the
sibling copybook of this manuscript stage of ‘Cyclops’—Groden describes Joyce’s ‘habit
of composing his material in blocks with only arbitrary attempts at transition or
connection. This practice is basic to the entire copybook: the eight scenes constitute large
blocks, and Joyce gives no indication of how he planned to connect them, even if he
97
For further information on these notes, see Susan Brown’s essay in GJS Issue 7 (Spring
2007), The Mystery of the Fuga per Canonem Solved and Michelle Witten’s further
contribution to the debate in GJS Issue 10 (Spring 2010), The Mystery of the Fuga per
Canonem Reopened?.
98
Michael Groden, ‘Ulysses’ in Progress, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977),
p. 119, n. 6. The reader is referred to Groden’s works for a comprehensive analysis of the
entire evolution of the episode and of Joyce’s activities in 1919, see ‘Ulysses’ in
Progress, pp. 115–65.
99
See also Michael Groden, ‘Cyclops in Progress, 1919’, JJQ Vol.12 Nos. 1/2 (Fall
1974/Winter 1975), pp. 123–68 and ‘Joyce at Work on ‘Cyclops’: Toward a Biography
of Ulysses’, JJQ Vol. 44, No. 2 (Winter 2007), pp. 217–45.
100
According to Groden, Joyce ‘began the episode [in Buffalo MS V.A.8] without a clear
idea of the technique he would use; he even planned briefly to continue the monologue
method’ (‘Ulysses’ in Progress, p. [115]).
43
knew at the time’.101 Groden’s description applies to the various text blocks on this
manuscript as well, and I would argue that this practice is a basic and fundamental aspect
of Joyce’s compositional method throughout his career. If Joyce had a plan for a
continuous narrative for ‘Cyclops’ at this stage (and this seems unlikely), it was certainly
different from the episode’s later form. Therefore, this manuscript stage cannot be called
an early ‘draft’ or even a ‘proto-draft’ without significant qualifications to what those
terms usually denote. In these ‘Cyclops’ manuscripts we have important examples of the
storehouse of material that allowed Joyce to work like an assemblagist before he wrote
continuous narrative drafts of episodes.
Even with the discovery of this manuscript, much of the documentation of the
evolution of ‘Cyclops’ is still missing. There were most likely other documents at this
draft stage (like MS V.A.8 and this manuscript that were either other copybooks or loose
pages). The next extant draft stage is Buffalo MS V.A.6,102 which is also composed of
non-sequential fragments, only some of which were copied from MS V.A.8 and this
manuscript. Since the texts in MSS V.A.8 and V.A.6 are often significantly revised (at
times based on BL Notesheet entries), at least one intermediary draft stage between these
two extant stages must have intervened. Furthermore, there were probably ancillary
documents of a similar kind as the later manuscript (MS V.A.6), though they too are now
missing. Furthermore, since MS V.A.6 covers only a small portion of the episode, at least
one draft stage intervened between it and the next extant draft stage, the Rosenbach
faircopy manuscript.103 The discovery of whatever draft stage Joyce wrote to produce the
faircopy manuscript would shed a great deal of light on the evolution of this episode. The
Rosenbach manuscript in turn was used to prepare the typescript for ‘Cyclops’ from
which both The Little Review and Ulysses were set.
This copybook begins in mid sentence with the continuation of the ‘eighth’
fragmentary scene,104 from Buffalo MS V.A.8, p. [24r], and both sections are in pencil.105
In fact, Joyce numbered the conclusion of the scene ‘8’ in blue crayon on p. [1r] here, just
as he had the last-written page of the Buffalo manuscript. The main body text is heavily
revised and there is much additional text in the margins. Neither the layout of the text on
the page nor the BL Notesheet draft usage makes it possible to determine whether Joyce
was copying the scene from an earlier version or whether it is a first draft, though Joyce’s
101
Groden, ‘Ulysses’ in Progress, p. 131. Buffalo MS V.A.8 has been reproduced in
black and white photo-facsimile on JJA 13.83–132; for further information about this
draft stage of ‘Cyclops’; see the catalogue description of this manuscript:
http://library.buffalo.edu/pl/collections/jamesjoyce/catalog/va8.htm.
102
See the catalogue description of this manuscript for further information about this later
draft stage of ‘Cyclops’:
103
Also, Buffalo MS V.A.7 contains an addition to the text on V.A.6; see
104
This scene is the courtroom parody; see Ulysses 12.1111–40.
105
The first four scenes in MS V.A.8 are in ink and the later four are in pencil, but in this
NLI copybook ink and pencil fragments alternate in a more random manner.
44
handwriting and the fact that he wrote in pencil suggest that the latter is more likely.106
This scene ends about two-thirds of the way down the page with blank space below it.
Joyce then wrote a new scene at the top of p. [1v], again in pencil, that he intended
to follow another fragmentary scene in Buffalo MS V.A.8, p. [22v], which he
correspondingly tagged here ‘7) | b)’. He relied heavily on BL ‘Cyclops’ Notesheet
entries to construct this short scene (to an even greater degree than he did for the rest of
the scene on MS V.A.8), including the poem.107 Joyce transcribed the entire scene from
MS V.A.8, with its continuation here, on a missing intermediary document, which
accounts for Joyce having crossed through the text in red crayon. He then transcribed it in
the later draft of the episode (Buffalo MS V.A.6), but he did not include it in any
subsequent extant draft or in Ulysses.
The next fragment on the page is even shorter, also in pencil, and in the form of a
statement of dialogue attributed to an anonymous speaker, simply tagged ‘—’,108 about
syphilis in the British Army. Joyce did not use this material as such again, though the
theme persists (see U 12.1197), and it was incorporated with other material from this
copybook in a later draft.
At the bottom of p. [1v] is the first bit of exchange between Joyce and Nora and the
dialogue is continued that same day on p. [4v]. He playfully demands that she loan him
‘10 ^(or 5 frs)^ francs’ to pay for the whiskey he has ‘just stood’ her: ‘If not, be damned!’
Joyce’s note is imbued with the style of ‘Cyclops’ and the draft-like nature of the banter
is evident in the way he revised the details as he normally would his creative work. His
handwriting is noticeably different from the one he used to write either the pencil or ink
drafts in this manuscript and in other Ulysses draft manuscripts. It resembles Joyce’s
note-taking hand, particularly as we know it from the many extant Buffalo Finnegans
Wake notebooks.
On p. [2r], Joyce began a new, integral, and well-developed scene that is continued
directly on pp. [3r] and then [4r] (see U 12.1675–735). I have been unable to locate any
BL Notesheet entries or prior textual state of this elaborate parody of a church scene, but
as Joyce wrote it in ink and only on the recto pages, this suggests that he may have
written an earlier draft of this fragmentary scene elsewhere and transcribed and then
further revised it here. Though this is the first unnumbered fragment in these early
‘Cyclops’ copybooks, it is crossed out in red crayon and so it seems most likely that
Joyce transferred it to at least one missing document before the scene next appears in the
Rosenbach manuscript version of the episode.
Joyce had left pp. [2v] and [3v] blank and then he wrote the uppermost block of
text on p. [3v] first. Like the text block on p. [1v], it is in pencil and Joyce tagged it as an
additional text for the ‘sixth’ fragment on MS V.A.8, p. [22r]. In fact, Joyce had marked
the end of the scene there with instructions to himself: ‘(v. p. 28)’; that is, see p. [3v]
here, which is yet another clue before 2002 that there must have been this companion
manuscript. This is a scene about Molly, ‘the ravenhaired daughter of Tweedy’, which
106
Like the rest of the scene, Joyce relied heavily on the BL ‘Cyclops’ Notesheets to
write this fragmentary scene; here specifically Notesheets 1, 3–5, and 10.
107
See BL ‘Cyclops’ Notesheet 3.36–9.
108
See Groden’s discussion of Joyce’s use of symbols to tag dialogue that he only later
assigned to characters: ‘Ulysses’ in Progress, p. 117.
45
Joyce recopied on Buffalo MS V.A.6, pp. [4r]–[5r], with the rest of the ‘sixth’ scene (see
U 12.1003–7).
Below it (and therefore almost certainly later), Joyce wrote another new scene, this
time in ink, and continued it on the previous verso, p. [2v] (see U 12.1593–620). It is yet
another parody scene: the arrival of Martin Cunningham, Jack Powers, and the variously-
named Orangeman is told in a nineteenth-century style of the ‘travellers’ arriving at the
‘rustic hostelry’.109 Though both pages are again crossed out with red crayon, this scene
does not appear in MS V.A.6. Nonetheless, it is virtually identical to the Rosenbach
version and Ulysses, except for the adjective Joyce used to portray Bloom’s countenance.
It is twice described as ‘olive’ here but appears both times as ‘pleasant’ in subsequent
versions.110
On p. [4v], the dialogue between Joyce and Nora is continued with her initial
response to his demand for a loan on p. [1v]. Her reply begins ‘In answer to yours of
todays [sic] date’ and raises an interesting question: how much of the texts on the
intervening pages had Joyce written between his note and hers? It is impossible to know
for certain, but a likely scenario is that Nora read Joyce’s note on p. [1v] and replied on
the first blank page she found. If this were the case, it would mean that Joyce had written
at least two new, significant scenes as well as some other fragments all on the same day
between their first exchange of notes. For whatever reason, she too adopts a parodic,
business-like tone that suits ‘Cyclops’ and states that she ‘regret[s]’ being unable to
‘advance’ him ‘the maximum sum’ but is willing to provide the lesser amount he had
suggested (that is, 5 rather than 10 Francs).
In one of the strangest cases of intertextual transference in the Joyce archive
anywhere, he then replies to her with a line directly from his notes for Ulysses that begins
‘The curse of a lopsided God light sideways […]’ and he continued the note, jokingly
insulting her, but then signed himself ‘yours affectionately | J J’.111 At some stage, Joyce
added the entire Ulysses text, with yet another line, in the left margin of MS V.A.8, p.
[10r] in pencil. It is impossible to determine the exact priority of the Notesheet entries,
the notes to Nora, and the addition to the draft, but this text next appears in the context of
the ‘syphilisation’ theme from p. [1v] here in the Rosenbach manuscript and then in
Ulysses at 12.1197–9. Nora has the last word in the matter when she echoes something
Joyce had in fact written to Sir Horace Rumbold a year earlier. In Rumbold’s name, she
presents her ‘compliments’ to Mr Joyce and ‘suggests that he shall go to Hell’.112
109
This scene must be the one Joyce refers to in his list of incidents (Buffalo MS V.A.7)
simply as ‘Arrival Martin’.
110
Like so much of the evolution of ‘Cyclops’, this change happened on one or more
missing documents.
111
Joyce noted the curse twice: ‘lopsided God’ appears on BL ‘Cyclops’ Notesheet 1.43,
and the fuller text quoted above (that is continued ‘light sideways on the bloody
thicklugged sons of whore’s gets’) is found on BL ‘Cyclops’ Notesheet 7.47–8.
112
Rumbold was the British Minister to Bern, Switzerland, and Joyce and he had several
unpleasant encounters; see JJII 447, 459, and elsewhere for Ellmann’s version of the
account.
46
Finally, two years later (in the summer of 1921 as an addition to the printers’
typescript), consciously or not, Joyce has the citizen in turn echo Nora’s curse in this
precise context:
—Their syphilisation, you mean, says the citizen. ^To hell with them!^ The curse
of a goodfornothing God light sideways […] (U 12.1197–8).
Finally, complaining of his ongoing work on ‘Ithaca’ in late June 1921, Joyce quoted this
curse again to Frank Budgen: ‘In the words of the Cyclops narrator the curse of my deaf
and dumb arse light sideways on Bloom and all his blooms and blossoms. I’ll break the
back of Ithaca tomorrow so ‘elp me fucking Chroist’ (LIII 46).
Returning to this manuscript, Joyce wrote another parody on pp. [5r] and [6r],
leaving p. [5v] blank. This is a mock Irish revivalist heroic epic about a ‘sinewyarmed
hero’ and his ‘savage animal of the dog tribe’ that became Ulysses 12.151–205. The draft
here is very similar to the text on the Rosenbach manuscript (though Joyce continued to
amplify his description of the giant’s appearance, especially on the proofs).
Without access to this manuscript, Groden wrote that, ‘Joyce created the parodies
first, the barroom scene soon after, and the narrative voice developed last’.113 In fact, now
we know that Joyce discovered both the first-person narrator’s voice and developed the
method of integrating it with the expansive parodic commentaries that define the
episode’s style when he wrote a new opening for the episode on pp. [7r]–[10r] of this
manuscript. Although the entire scene has most of the elements that readers know from
the published texts, this is very much a draft-in-process. Joyce revised it fluidly and
heavily, at various times in ink and pencil, with his usual further additions in the left
margin. As in Ulysses, the scene here begins with the unnamed ‘I’ meeting Joe Hynes
and recounting the story about the near miss between the street sweeper’s gear and his
‘eye’. The episode’s Homeric parallel with Polyphemus is now clearly established. In this
draft, Joyce seamlessly combined the opening’s anti-Semitic dialogue and what became
the episode’s first parody.114 Naturally enough, Joyce had also already determined that
Hynes and the narrator would visit Barney Kiernan’s pub to see ‘the citizen’ and tell him
about the meeting in the City Arms Hotel. Notably, this portion of the draft is only lightly
revised.
The new opening of the episode is continuous in this draft up to Ulysses 12.67 at
the top of p. [10r],115 but then jumps directly to the scene where the pair enter Barney
Kiernan’s and meet the citizen and Garryowen already in situ (this scene begins at U
12.118). In the Rosenbach manuscript and Ulysses these narrative actions are interrupted
by the ‘land of holy Michan’ digression. Joyce had already written this scene on Buffalo
MS V.A.8, pp. [1r]–[2r] and probably intended it as the original opening of the
113
Groden, ‘Ulysses’ in Progress, p. 124.
114
Although Joyce relied on a few BL Notesheet entries for the narrator’s part of the
dialogue, no notes have been located for the pseudo-legalistic parody that he wrote
directly as part of the opening (see U 12.32–51). Nonetheless, he must have relied on
Thom’s to write it since Joyce noted both correct addresses for Herzog and Geraghty.
115
It is also remarkably similar, as subsequently revised here, to the published version.
47
episode.116 There the mythic and parodic description of the area around Barney Kiernan’s
also served to introduce ‘O’Bloom’ (‘the noble hero, ^the son of Rudolph^’ […]) as he
walked on his errand to the pub. Joyce’s solution in integrating the older and newer texts
was simple enough: in a typically utilitarian fashion, he just broke up the older scene. He
merely combined the first and third descriptive paragraphs (and they appear basically the
same, though much expanded, on the Rosenbach version and then as U 12.68–99 and
12.102–17). On the other hand, he also reserved what he had already written about
Bloom and later inserted it in what would be lines 12.215–7, about a hundred lines later
in Ulysses.
For now, Joyce continued the narrative on pp. [10r]–[11r] in this manuscript. Here
the ‘Stand and deliver’ exchange between the citizen and Hynes is virtually identical to
the published versions, including the way the citizen rubs ‘his hand in his eye’. Joyce also
fluidly wrote Hynes’s dialogue about his ‘opinion of the times’ with the citizen, and it is
already remarkably similar to its appearance in Ulysses.117 Joyce had also by now already
determined the narrator’s catchword, ‘begob’; it appears for the first time on p. [11r].
Similarly, the dialogue as the men order drinks (some of it based on BL ‘Cyclops’ notes)
and the reason Hynes has the money to pay for them is already established. So far, the
narrative as we know it in Ulysses has proceeded in these pages uninterruptedly from U
12.118 to 12.147. Then, as noted above, by the time Joyce wrote the Rosenbach version
of the episode, he had seamlessly integrated the mock-heroic description of the citizen
and his faithful companion that he had written on pp. [5r]–[6r] in this copybook into this
scene, with just some additional transitional material before and after the parody (see U
12.151–205).
The placement of the various elements of the text in these pages sheds light on
Joyce’s later deliberations about how to introduce Bloom in ‘Cyclops’. On p. [11r] he
wrote:
And begob he [Hynes] ^<outs> lands out^ with golden sovereign.

― Were you robbing a poorbox, Joe? says I.
― Sweat of my brow, says Joe. (U 12.206–11)
Then, as an addition on the facing page ([10v]), referring to an earlier scene in ‘Aeolus’,
Joyce has Hynes say:
’Twas the prudent member gave me the wheeze.118

(Description of LB)
Presumably, the second line was Joyce’s note to himself to add the unused material from
the older description of Bloom in Buffalo MS V.A.8, p. [1r]. Most likely, Joyce first
116
Joyce tagged it with a ‘1)’ in blue crayon and he noted it as number ‘1’ in the other list
of incidents at the end of this copybook (p. [22v]).
117
This exchange is based on BL ‘Cyclops’ 1.73–9. In 1966, Hugh Staples identified the
source of dialogue here as Alexander M. Sullivan’s New Ireland: Political Sketches. Also
see UNBM 19–20.
118
See U 12.211–2.
48
returned to the earlier text and revised it in pencil, but this did not suit him either. So he
also rewrote Bloom’s entrance in full (just as it appears in Ulysses) right below the note
and also added the narrator’s insulting account of his first sighting of Bloom (see U
12.213–14) right above, all on p. [11v]. Joyce pieced all the elements together by the time
he wrote the Rosenbach manuscript and it remained virtually unchanged from then on.
Hynes’s revelation that he had been paid by ‘the old woman of Prince’s street’ sets
the citizen off on his rant about the Irish Independent on pp. [11r] and [12r] (see U
12.218–43). The entire scene is quite similar to the subsequent versions, including the list
of names read aloud. Although Joyce did not use any of the extant BL Notesheet entries
for this list, it is based on the Irish Daily Independent for 16 June 1904.
The episode’s new opening ends towards the bottom of p. [12r]. Joyce later drew a
short centred horizontal line separating it from yet another parodic text, the execution
scene (see U 12.525–678). The sketch continues directly on pp. [13r]–[15r], with
additions in the margins and on pp. [13v] and [14v].119 This relatively long scene here is
followed by two unrelated further fragments and the rest of the copybook is blank, except
for yet another list of incidents on its final page that accounts for the arrival of some of
the characters at Barney Kiernan’s.
[back to top]
To be continued.
Abbreviations:
Manuscript Collections:
BL British Library, London

Buffalo Poetry Collection, University at Buffalo, State University of New York
NLI National Library of Ireland, Dublin
Rosenbach Rosenbach Museum & Library, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Works by Joyce:
JJA James Joyce Archive, edited by Michael Groden et al. 63 volumes (New
York: Garland, 1977–8); cited by volume and page number.
LI, LII, Letters of James Joyce. Vol. I, edited by Stuart Gilbert (New York: Viking,
LIII 1957; reissued with corrections 1966). Vols. II and III, edited by Richard
Ellmann (New York: Viking, 1966).
SL Selected Letters of James Joyce, edited by Richard Ellmann (New York:
Viking, 1975; London: Faber, 1975).
U Ulysses, edited by Hans Walter Gabler et al. (New York and London:
Garland, 1984, 1986), also published by Random House, Bodley Head, and
119
In early October 1921, Joyce wrote the ‘Dublin Metropolitan police’ addition (Buffalo
MSS V.A.2 and then V.A.9) that the printers added to the first setting of ‘Cyclops’ in
proofs (that is, the first placards).
49
Penguin; cited by episode and line number.
Secondary Sources:
GJS Genetic Joyce Studies
JNEDU Joyce’s Notes and Early Drafts for ‘Ulysses’: Selections from the Buffalo
Collection, edited by Phillip F. Herring, (Charlottesville: University Press of
Virginia, 1977).
JJII Richard Ellmann, James Joyce, revised edition (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1982).
JJBU Rodney Wilson Owen, James Joyce and the Beginnings of ‘Ulysses’ (Ann
Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1983).
JJQ James Joyce Quarterly
UNBM Joyce’s ‘Ulysses Notesheets in the British Museum, edited by Phillip F.
Herring, (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1972).
WD The Workshop of Daedalus, edited by Robert Scholes and Richard M. Kain,
(Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1965 (see
http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/JoyceColl/JoyceColl-
idx?id=JoyceColl.ScholesWorkshop)
[back to top]
Appendix:
Census of the Extant Ulysses Holograph Manuscripts:
Manuscript: Dates & Place of Composition: Document(s):
‘Telemachus’ (1):
Faircopy for Typescript September–October 1917: Zurich Rosenbach
‘Nestor’ (2):
Faircopy for Typescript October–early December 1917: Zurich Rosenbach
‘Proteus’ (3):
Earlier Proto-draft Fall 1917: Zurich NLI 36,639/07/A
Later Draft Fall 1917: Zurich Buffalo V.A.3
Faircopy for Typescript December 1917: Zurich Rosenbach
‘Calypso’ (4):
Faircopy for Typescript February 1918: Zurich Rosenbach
‘Lotus Eaters’ (5):
Collateral Faircopy January–May 1918: Zurich Rosenbach
‘Hades’ (6):
Collateral Faircopy January–July 1918: Zurich Rosenbach
‘Aeolus’ (7):
Collateral Faircopy January–August 1918: Zurich Rosenbach
‘Lestrygonians’ (8):
Collateral Faircopy 1918: Zurich Rosenbach
‘Scylla and Charybdis’ (9):
Earliest Draft Early to mid 1918: Zurich NLI 36,639/08/A &
Earliest Draft NLI 36,639/08/B &
Earliest Draft NLI 36,639/08/C
Collateral Faircopy Late 1918: Zurich Rosenbach
‘Wandering Rocks’ (10):
Faircopy for Typescript January–February 1919: Zurich Rosenbach
‘Sirens’ (11):
50
Manuscript: Dates & Place of Composition: Document(s):

Partial Early Draft & Fragments Late 1917–early 1918: Zurich NLI 36,639/07/B
Later Draft January–May 1919: Zurich NLI 36,639/09 &
Later Draft Buffalo V.A.5
Collateral Faircopy June 1919: Zurich Rosenbach
‘Cyclops’ (12):
Earlier Fragmentary Texts June 1919: Zurich Buffalo V.A.8 &
Earlier Fragmentary Texts NLI 36,639/10
Later Draft of Texts June–July 1919: Zurich Buffalo V.A.6
Additional Text Buffalo V.A.7
Faircopy for Typescript August–September 1919: Zurich Rosenbach
Additional Manuscript for Proofs October 1921 Buffalo V.A.9
‘Nausicaa’ (13):
Early Draft November 1919–January 1920: Trieste Buffalo V.A.10 &
Early Draft Cornell 56A &
Early Draft Cornell 56B
Mixed Faircopy for Typescript January–February 1920: Trieste Rosenbach
‘Oxen of the Sun’ (14):
Earlier Draft February–March 1920: Trieste Buffalo V.A.11 &
Earlier Draft Buffalo V.A.12 &

Earlier Draft NLI 36,639/11/A &
Earlier Draft NLI 36,639/11/B
Later Draft February–March 1920: Trieste Buffalo V.A.13 &
Later Draft Buffalo V.A.14 &
Later Draft NLI 36,639/11/C &
Later Draft NLI 36,639/11/D &
Later Draft NLI 36,639/11/E &
Later Draft NLI 36,639/11/F
Pre-faircopy Fragment March–April 1920: Trieste Cornell (Uncatalogued)
Mixed Faircopy for Typescript May 1920: Trieste Rosenbach
‘Circe’ (15):
Earlier Draft January–July 1920: Trieste Buffalo V.A.19
Intermediary ‘Quinn’ Draft July–December 1920: Paris NLI 35,958
Later Draft July–December 1920: Paris: Paris NLI 36,639/12
Faircopy for Typescript December 1920–January 1921: Paris Rosenbach
Additional Manuscript for Proofs September 1921: Paris Buffalo V.A.20
‘Eumaeus’ (16):
‘Eumeo’ Manuscript: Earlier Draft January–February 1921: Paris Private Collection
Later Draft Mid February 1921: Paris Buffalo V.A.21
Faircopy for Typescript Mid to Late February 1921: Paris Rosenbach
‘Ithaca’ (17):
Early Proto-draft March–August 1921: Paris NLI 36,639/13
Faircopy for Typescript November 1921: Paris Rosenbach
‘Penelope’ (18):
Early Draft Early summer 1921: Paris NLI 36,639/14
Faircopy for Typescript July–September 1921 Rosenbach &
Faircopy for Typescript Buffalo V.A.21
51
[back to top]
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A First Foray Into The National Library

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A First Foray Into The National Library

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Crispi: ‘First Foray’ GJS 11

A First Foray into the National Library of Ireland’s Joyce Manuscripts:

Manuscript Name: NLI MS Number:

A General Survey of Joyce’s Ulysses Manuscripts9

He accepted my offer immediately and joyfully. I thought it rash of him to

Notes on Dante and Italian Vocabulary: 1897–8

Early Commonplace Book: 1903–12

I prepared a more comprehensive commentary on this manuscript that was published in

Early Ulysses ‘Subject’ Notebook for Drafts: 1917

Joyce compiled this ‘Subject’ notebook at a crucial juncture in the development of

I. Later Ulysses Notebook: February–May 1921

II. Later Ulysses Notebook: February–May 1921

Therefore, I must stipulate to have three sendings of proofs (preferably a

III. Later Ulysses Notebook: January–February 1921

Earlier Typescript Schema for Ulysses: November 1921

Earlier Partial Drafts of ‘Proteus’ and ‘Sirens’ and Notes: 1917

An Earlier Proto-Draft of ‘Proteus’: (MS 36,639/07/A)

The fragmentary nature of these short segments is surprising and raises an

An Early Partial Draft of ‘Sirens’

Fragmentary Texts for ‘Sirens’

Complete Earlier Draft of ‘Scylla and Charybdis’: 1918

CHARYBDE ET SCYLLA. / (Neuvième episode) 10 grandes feuilles de papier

[SCYLLA ET CHARYBDIS. / (Ninth episode) 10 large white unlined sheets of

undea et ea quae concupiscumus’ (U 9.429–31). It appears in the main text (revised as

Partial Later Draft of ‘Sirens’: 1919

Scenes and Fragmentary Texts for ‘Cyclops’: June 1919

And begob he [Hynes] ^<outs> lands out^ with golden sovereign.

’Twas the prudent member gave me the wheeze.118

BL British Library, London

Penguin; cited by episode and line number.

Manuscript: Dates & Place of Composition: Document(s):

Earlier Draft Buffalo V.A.12 &

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