The June 18 sale held by Fonsie Mealy (20/25% buyer’s premium) contained copy No 30 of that select part of the complete edition of 1000 copies produced by Shakespeare & Company in Paris.
In a later morocco gilt binding by Buddenbrooks of Boston, but with the simple and well-known ‘Greek flag’ or bluish green paper covers bound in, it sold at a near high-estimate €85,000 (£75,895).
The Castlecomer, Co Kilkenny, auction house noted that most of these special copies are now in either institutional or private collections.
In 2004 a fine, as issued example in those paper wrappers made $250,000 (then £140,00) at Sotheby’s New York as part of the fine Neville library, but two years earlier, at Christie’s New York, $410,000 (then £262,400) had been paid for a copy in the Roger Rechler library.
An out-of-series copy on Van Gelder Zonen paper, it was un-numbered and unsigned, but inscribed by Joyce for Henry Kaeser, a Lausanne publisher he had met while in France.
Eric Gill jacket design
In 1936 the Bodley Head produced a limited edition of Ulysses that contained extra appendices dealing with the book’s difficult legal history.
A hundred copies were printed on mould-made paper and bound in vellum gilt (one example of which made a record £16,500 at a Dominic Winter sale in 2003) but a further 500 were printed on Japan vellum and featured on both the green boards and dust jacket the same gilt bow design by Eric Gill.
One of those copies made £2300 in a June 7 sale held by Tennants (20% buyer’s premium) of Leyburn.