posted on 20 Jul 2018

Ulysses by James Joyce, illustrated by John Vernon Lord

Released in 2017 and only available from The Folio Society, this lavish and extraordinary edition doesn’t come cheap. On this occasion there’s no need to explain or apologise for its three figure price tag because it’s quite a stunning piece of artwork.

John Vernon Lord doesn’t seem like the most obvious candidate to commission illustrations for James Joyce from. The novel is mind-bogglingly complex and any illustrator would be taking on a mammoth task but for one who has made his reputation as a children’s book artist the challenge may seem overwhelming. But that would be to massively underestimate Lord’s remarkable skill and anyone familiar with his drawings for the Alice books of Lewis Carroll will know that his ability to work with the abstract and the surreal is quite remarkable.

Lord took on Ulysses (as he has also with Finnegan’s Wake) as a dedicated project into which he invested all his formidable design and illustrative talents. He’s come up not just with a set of illustrations but a total design concept that includes the binding and cover. His work has been acknowledged by the V&A and they declared him Illustrator of the Year for 2018 largely on the strength of his work for this edition of Ulysses. On their website he explains exactly what lies behind his design ideas:

“The binding design relates to the word omphalos, which occurs in Joyce's Ulysses four times. It is a Greek word meaning a navel and in the ancient world it was represented as a sacred conical object. The well-known stone at Delphi was thought to mark the centre of the earth. In Homer's Odyssey we read that Calypso lived on an island called Ogygia, which was in the navel of the sea; she detained Odysseus/Ulysses on the island for seven years. The navel is also symbolical of birth and how we are all interconnected. For Stephen Dedalus the omphalos with its umbilical cord appears to symbolise how we all go back to Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. The cords of all link back, strand entwining cable of all flesh. Thus, my adaptation of an interlacement design by Leonardo da Vinci has connecting single bands, which form the overall pattern, radiating from a common centre (an omphalos if you like). It serves to illustrate the notion of the umbilical cord going back through time.There is a degree of correspondence between Joyce's novel and Homer's Odyssey. With this in mind, I have on the slipcase depicted the waves of the sea to represent the ocean upon which the Greek hero sails for ten years on his way home to Ithaca following the Trojan War.”

A truly impressive level of care has been taken over the production of this edition and the well-known Joyce scholars Danis Rose and John O’Hanlon have reset the original 1922 edition which they believe is most authoritative text. The book also includes an essay by the editors detailing their methodology and Stacey Herbert has written a short history of the various publication tribulations of the book. 

John Vernon Lord is also given space to write about the experience of producing the illustrations as Fine Books and Collections notes:

“Lord has also written a revealing introductory essay that places the images in context, illuminating the myriad meanings, symbols, events and inspirations behind each piece. Lord acts almost as a guide to the labyrinthine narrative. The praedella strip of images at the bottom of each illustration references the Linati ‘schema’, a way of navigating through the text created by Joyce for his friend Carlo Linati. “

It’s relatively rare to see a book treated as a total, integrated artwork but this is a fine example of what it’s possible to achieve in the world of modern fine bindings and illustration. I have no doubt that this edition will go on to be acknowledged in the future as a masterpiece of book production.

All this puts the price of £125 into context I think and makes it a bargain. But I think you need to move quickly before the edition sells out and prices on the secondary market escalate.

 

Terry Potter

July 2018