Ulysses. Joyce, James.

First authorized American edition, first printing, trade issue, in the first state dust jacket, with "Reichl" printed on the lower outer corner of the front panel. This edition was conceived by the typographer and graphic designer Ernst Reichl (1900-1980), a "whole book designer" who devised the look of the contents, binding, and dust jacket. The result was "a functional and dramatic design that seemed as modern as the text itself" (Drew & Sternberger, p. 3). Appraising this edition, John Updike wrote that "the title's seven letters, in elongated and squared-off form, take up the entire front surface of the book, echoing the mazelike course the characters pursue through a June day in Dublin". Reichl thought that his edition of Ulysses was "the best known design I ever made". His later book designs include Austin Tappan Wright's Islandia (1942), Bud Schulberg's The Disenchanted (1950), and Marshall McLuhan's The Mechanical Bride (1951). This edition was preceded in the United States by a pirated edition of the Shakespeare and Company Ulysses, published in New York for Samuel Roth in 1929. Slocum & Cahoon A21. Ned Drew and Paul Sternberger, By Its Cover: Modern American Book Cover Design, 2005; John Updike, "Deceptively Conceptual", New Yorker, 9 October 2005. Octavo. Original cream cloth over bevelled boards, spine and front cover lettered in black and red, top edge red. With dust jacket, designed by Ernst Reichl. Spine faintly toned, a couple of tiny marks to cloth, contents clean; jacket spine toned, small chips and a couple of short closed tears to extremities, a couple of small faint damp stains, unclipped: a very good copy in very good jacket.