Anna Livia Plurabelle.

New York: Crosby Gaige,, 1928. A choice example of this predecessor to the Wake First edition, signed limited issue, number 666 of 800 copies signed by the author. Copies are rare in the publisher's glassine and slipcase, which are unrecorded by the bibliographers Slocum & Cahoon. This edition, which included a further 50 unsigned copies printed on green paper and bound in black cloth, precedes the British edition by two years. Anna Livia Plurabelle is an early published chapter from Joyce's famous "Work in Progress" that eventually became Finnegans Wake (1939). T. S. Eliot thought it an excellent chapter to select for early publication, writing that "this fantasy of the course of the river Liffey is the best-known part of Finnegans Wake, and is the best introduction to it" (p. 7). Duodecimo. Original brown cloth, spine lettered and decorated in gilt, blind rules and dog-tooth roll on covers, front cover with gilt triangular centrepiece, top edge gilt, fore and bottom edges untrimmed. In publisher's glassine and original green card slipcase. Two later postcards with Joyce's portrait, one by Man Ray, loosely inserted. Spine head knocked, bump to upper corners, cloth bright and contents clean; glassine with tear to upper spine and fold ends, with singular chip: a near-fine copy. Slocum & Cahoon A32. T. S. Eliot, Introducing James Joyce: A Selection of Joyce's Prose, 1942.