Tales Told of Shem and Shaun. Three Fragments From Work in Progress

Paris: Black Sun Press, 1929. First edition. xvi, 64 pp. Original printed wrappers, in publisher's slipcase. One of 500 copies on Holland Van Gelder Zonen paper, of a total edition of 650 copies. Frontispiece portrait of Joyce by Brancusi. A fine copy with supplied later acetate wrapper, in the original slipcase, which is rubbed with tape repair at the corners, splitting at the top edge, and lacking a three-inch piece of the lower edge.

Brancusi's frontispiece portrait, commissioned by the publishers Harry and Caresse Crosby, was a "Symbol of Joyce" intended to convey the sense of "enigmatic involution." When the sketch was shown to Joyce's father in Dublin, he remarked gravely, "The boy seems to have changed a good deal." (Ellmann, p. 614). Slocum & Cahoon A36. Minkoff, Black Sun, A-21.