I see that Ulysses: A Reader's Edition, due out next Monday and about which I enthused last week, is already causing controversy, with Joyce's grandson, Stephen, unhappy about the copyright situation and attempting to stop publication.
Until recently, an author's work went out of copyright fifty years after his death, which meant that Joyce was out of copyright in 1991. However, in 1993, the law was brought into line with European rules, which decreed that the author had to be dead for seventy years. This meant that Joyce was suddenly in copyright again, with payments due to his estate.
Here it starts to get confusing because the rules also state that if an editor was working on a text before the 1993 law came into effect, he or she can hold on to the copyright, and in this instance Lilliput Press and Picador, the publishers of this new edition of Ulysses, are maintaining that editor Danis Rose had indeed embarked on his "reader's edition" of the book in that intervening period.
How it will pan out I don't know, but you may find out more at 7.30pm on Monday (the evening of Bloomsday, need it be said) when Danis Rose, Anthony Cronin and Seamus Deane will be in Hodges Figgis of Dawson Street to talk about Joyce his book and this new edition. Admission is £2, which is redeemable against the price of the book, should you purchase it and I think you should.
KEVIN CONNOLLY writes from The Winding Stair, that excellent bookshop and cafe on Lower Ormond Quay in Dublin, to let me know that his most recent catalogue of second hand and antiquarian books of Irish interest is now available at the shop.
Many of our better antiquarian books," he says, "are sold through the catalogue, due to the perils inherent in placing them on shelves in the shop, the chief of which is shoplifting. This unfortunately means that we have to send lists to our customers from time to time to let them know that we are more than the sum of our shelves.
Among the hundreds, of first editions that caught my eye in the new catalogue are: Elizabeth Bowen's Friends and Relations (1931) for £15, Patrick Boyle's Like Any Other Man (1966) for £12.50, Patrick Kavanagh's A Soul for Sale (1947) for £70, Thomas Kinsella's Downstream (1962) for £32, and John Montague's Death Of a Chieftain (1964) for £40.
You can also get various numbers of the Bell, the Dubliner, the Dublin Magazine, Envoy the Honest Uisterman, Irish Writing and the Kilkenny Magazine for between £5 and £7.50.
This is a handy way for the serious collector to procure books and periodicals, but nothing really compares with the pleasure of actually being in a good second hand bookshop and coming across a book or a particular edition that quickens the heartbeat This has always been the joy of the Winding Stair and of Kenny's in Galway and of the dwindling number of other such shops in this country.
Incidentally, Kevin tells me that the Winding Stair is celebrating its fifteenth birthday in August and that he hopes to organise a series of readings by "some of those who cut their reading teeth here many moons ago" - people like Dermot Bolger, Patrick McCabe, Philip Casey and Sara Berkeley. I'll keep you informed about this.
MARTIN HEALY was a young writer who, in his short career, won two Hennessy fiction awards and an Arts Council prize. He was also involved with the magazine Force 10 from its inception, and at the time of his death early this year he had just completed a first collection of stories.
Now, in his honour, the Martin Healy Short Story Award has been instituted, open to Irish writers and to writers living in Ireland, and with a first prize of £1,000, a second of £200 and a third of £100. No story should be longer than 3,000 words, there's an entrance fee of £5, and the closing date for entries is July 20th. You can get an entry form from the Model Arts Centre, The Mall, Sligo.
THE second edition of Metre, the poetry magazine edited by Hugh Maxton, Justin Quinn and David Wheatley, is dubbed an "Australian special issue". Why this devotion to poetry from Down Under at such an early stage in the magazine's existence isn't explained, though some of the poems are certainly impressive.
The production is impressive, too, with good layout and a pleasing typeface, and for those not obsessed with the far off continent, there's a section at the end featuring such non Aussies as Carol Rumens and Caitriona O'Reilly, as well as a number of interesting reviews of recent poetry. Good value at £5.