[6], 735 pp. 21.5x16 cm. (8½x6¼"), period half morocco & boards, spine tooled in gilt, raised bands, mottled endpapers, top edge gilt. Pirated First American Edition.

The true first American edition of Ulysses, a piracy based on the 1927 Shakespeare and Company printing. It is identifiable by various typographical errors, including "Jonthan Cape" on p.[2], and inverted text in the third to the last line on p.323. The Bucknell Special Collections website briefly describes the piracy - the "scarce, first American printing of James Joyce’s 1922 novel Ulysses was produced by Samuel and Max Roth during the time Joyce’s work was censored in the United States and other countries outside of France. In 1929, Roth printed between 2000 and 3000 copies of Ulysses from the 1927 authorized edition published by Shakespeare and Company. The majority of Roth’s pirated work was seized by the Society of Suspension of Vice, making existing copies of this printing difficult to locate. Roth’s printing showed little concern for the literary merits of Ulysses and included numerous instances of corrupt text, proving the copy was unedited and did not mirror the 1927 Shakespeare and Company edition on which it was based. Adding further to the publishing history of Ulysses, Roth’s 1929 printing was mistakenly used by Random House to publish the first authorized edition of Ulysses in 1934 when the United States censorship ban was lifted." Ownership signature of A.B. Siewers, 1931, to front flyleaf, along with his bindstamp.