Letter from Ezra Pound (1885–1972) to an unidentified recipient

In this letter, the poet Ezra Pound recounts the complicated publication history of Ulysses. Pound was instrumental in the first publication of Joyce’s work: he was co-editor of The Little Review and also helped to place it in The Egoist, a British literary journal. Both journals soon fell afoul of obscenity laws, and publication of the novel in serialized form was abruptly halted. Possibly in protest against the censorship, the American publisher Samuel Roth published unauthorized—and unintentionally defective—versions of Ulysses, first in parts (beginning in 1922) and then as a book (1929). Pound, who regarded as outrageous the law under which Ulysses was suppressed, had originally approved of Roth’s project but strongly condemned his 1929 edition.