SOURCE: Bishop, Edward L. “The ‘Garbled History’ of the First-edition Ulysses.” Joyce Studies Annual 9 (summer 1998): 3-36.

In the following excerpt, Bishop explores the conflicting accounts of the events leading up to the decision by Beach to publish Joyce's Ulysses, using Beach's own memoir about Shakespeare and Company as one of the sources of information in helping trace the editorial and creative process for the book.

Joyce was fond of garbled history: and so am I.

—Sylvia Beach

In the spring of 1921 a shattered James Joyce slumped in a chair in Sylvia Beach's bookshop and told her his last chance to have Ulysses published had evaporated. Then, spontaneously, Beach offered to produce Joyce's gigantic work. He was “delighted,” she was proud, and the history of modernism was forever changed. The story is familiar. Indeed the stories surrounding the publication of the first 1922 edition have become part of the folklore...