Footnotes

FINE FIRST EDITION OF JOYCE'S RARE BROADSIDE POEM: A BITTER FAREWELL TO IRELAND FOLLOWING THE DESTRUCTION OF THE FIRST EDITION OF 'DUBLINERS'.

The poem, a cutting satire in the voices of the Dublin publisher George Roberts and the printer, John Falconer, was written "in the railway station waiting room at Flushing, Holland on the way to Trieste from Dublin after the malicious burning of the 1st edition of Dubliners (1000 copies less one in my possession) by the printer Messrs John Falconer. Upper Sackville Street Dublin in July 1912" (Slocum & Cahoon, citing Joyce's note on the Esher-Randle-Keynes-Spoerri copy).

The chequered history of Joyce's attempts to get Dubliners printed is well documented by Richard Ellmann (James Joyce, 1982). A series of potential publishers and printers were put off by fears of libel, obscenity and, finally, in the case of Grant Richards (for Maunsel) the "anti-Irishness" of some stories. John Falconer did print 1,000 copies of Dubliners in the summer of 1910, a year after the signed contract with Maunsel, but they were not bound or released. Two years later, after negotiations between Richards and Joyce became irretrievably bitter and public, they were destroyed. According to Joyce the 1,000 copies were burned (hence "Gas from a Burner") though Richards averred that they were merely cut up and pulped. Joyce rescued one copy from destruction and the dejected author set off with Nora and the children back to Trieste. It was while waiting for a connecting train at Flushing in Holland that he began writing 'Gas From a Burner', which was duly completed in the train on the way to Munich. The broadside was printed on his return to Trieste on 15 September, and copies were sent to his brother Charles in Dublin for free distribution to his friends (and enemies) there. Joyce of course never set foot in Ireland again.