Title: Exiles. A Play in Three Acts.
Publisher: The Egoist Press, London
Publication Date: 1921
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Good
Edition: 2nd Edition, 1st impression.
The first issue of the second edition of Joyce's only play, issued here by Egoist in 1921 from 500 copies of the original Egoist Press edition sold (1,000 copies were printed, 500 of which were rebound for a second impression by Cape). 8vo. 154 printed pages. Neat, small, contemporary, ink ownership inscription at the top of the front free endpaper. 13 x 19 cm. Original green cloth lettered in gilt at the spine and with the Egoist imprint at the base of the backstrip (the title page also has original Egoist Press imprint). A little very slight toning to preliminary and concluding leaves, and to occasional margins throughout. Spine head slightly rubbed. A good+ copy. No dust wrapper. Exiles is James Joyce's only extant play and draws on the story of "The Dead", the final short story in Joyce's story collection Dubliners. The play was rejected by W. B. Yeats for production by the Abbey Theatre. Its first major London performance was in 1970, when Harold Pinter directed it at the Mermaid Theatre. It was written in Trieste during 1914 and 1915, and first published by Grant Richards in London and by B. W. Huebsch in New York on May 25, 1918. Joyce purposely waited to publish the play until after A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man appeared in book form in 1916. In many ways the structure of Exiles resembles those in the plays of Ibsen that Joyce had so admired a decade earlier. The play also reflects an autobiographical projection of what life might have been like for Joyce and his family had they returned to Ireland around this time. Bookseller Inventory # 5058