A first edition, first impression, trade-issue copy of Joyce’s last and most innovative prose work, Finnegans Wake.

• James Joyce (Irish).
• London: Faber & Faber, 1939.
• Large octavo.
• Bound in the publisher’s burgundy cloth, titles to spine gilt, with the unclipped dust jacket, housed in green morocco gilt solander box. 

One of 3,400 sets of sheets for the trade edition of Finnegans Wake which were printed for Faber. Of these, 2,255 were bound and sold at 25 shillings, 950 were destroyed by the publisher and the remaining were gratis copies. It is possible that the ꦐ950 discarded sets of sheets remained unsold because of the price, which Joyce believed was too high.

"'A way alone aloved alost along the…' If Finnegans Wake is a key book, it is a key whi🍷ch needs a key" (Connolly). "His work is enriched by such large resources of invꦉention and allusion that its total effect is infinite variety" (Harry Levin).