All that was missing from the Bloomsday centenary was a controversial new edition of Ulysses. Now that omission has been rectified. Amid much cloak-and-dagger, a revised version of the masterpiece will today be published in England, and Joycean scholars everywhere are holding on to their hats, writes Frank McNally.
The move amounts to a declaration of war on the James Joyce estate - essentially the writer's grandson, Stephen Joyce - by the new book's editor, Mr Danis Rose, an Irishman.
Mr Rose was responsible for the ill-fated Reader's Edition of Ulysses in 1997, which was denounced by the estate as "the equivalent of drawing a moustache on the Mona Lisa". After a long and bitter court case in London, the book was effectively suppressed.
Now Mr Rose is exploiting a loophole in the ruling by excising material - about 200 words - that had been drawn from previously unpublished manuscripts. Amid fears of a Joycean jihad, however, both the Irish printers and the designers of the new book have chosen to remain incognito.
The protectiveness of the Joyce estate is notorious and has resulted in frequent threats of legal action against reproductions or exhibitions of the writer's copyrighted material.
Last month the Oireachtas passed emergency legislation to safeguard an exhibition on Ulysses at the National Library, which had been threatened by the estate.
A consultant to the new book, Mr Anthony Farrell, describes it as an attempt to "test the waters" surrounding Joyce's copyright, which expired in 1991 but was reinstated by an EU directive in 1995.
His tentative note was deepened by the fact that today's launch is in Mousehole, a village in Cornwall where Mr Rose holidays every year.
But speaking from Mousehole last night, Mr Rose said the decision to publish in the UK was taken only because the ruling on the Reader's Edition had been handed down by a London court.
He added that the Joyce estate had been sent a copy of the book and had yet to reply. "I don't think there's anything they can do about it," he said.
Legally enforced amendments are not the only ones in the new text. A controversial feature of the 1997 book was Mr Rose's decision to include apostrophes in Molly Bloom's soliloquy. This, too, has now been rectified.
"I must announce - to the relief of many of her suitors - that Molly has once again been stripped of her apostrophes," he writes.
The book will be on sale in Dublin next week at €30. The Joyce estate was not available for comment last night.