In 1984 was published the news-capturing scholarly work, the "Critical and Synoptic Edition" of James Joyce's Ulysses, which, as The New York Times said, corrected "almost 5,000 omissions, transpositions and other errors included in previous editions of the seminal 20th-century novel." That remarkable work of scholarship, labor, and love, however, ran to three volumes in heft and rang up at $200 in price. Here, then, comes the single-volume trade-book edition of the same edited and restored text, placing the great novel, in as close to its originally-intended form as can be achieved, within reach of the common reader. Missing only is the vast scholarly apparatus of the longer version, though this one comes with a pleasantly helpful preface by Joyce biographer Richard Ellmann and a methodologically explanatory afterward by Hans Walter Gabler. A welcome event. Publication date, readers will note, is Bloomsday.
