The misadventures of James Joyce’s Ulysses at the handsnof pubhshers and editors has recently been in the news.nMany of the commentators seem to believe that what Joycensuffered was unusual, and that most contemporary authorsnare treated better. Listen to Thomas Marc Parrott (writingnin 1934) on George Bernard Shaw:nMr. Shaw, for instance, when he is ready to publishna play contracts for its appearance with a publisher,nsends him a neatly typed manuscript, receivesnseveral sets of proof which he carefully corrects, andnfinally sees his work given to the worid in a printednform as nearly accurate as human ingenuity andncare can make it.nBut Shaw is the exception. Some authors are partially tonblame, because they engage in substantial rewriting of theirnbooks in proof. When they are supposed to be correctingnprinters’ slips, they are in fact adding pages and evennchapters to the work. Often, however, it is the publishers andntheir editorial staff who are at fault.nSince we possess Joyce’s handwritten copy of Ulysses (thenRosenbach manuscript), and it has been published in a fine,nE. Christian Kopff is professor of classics at thenUniversity of Colorado, Boulder, and has editednEuripides’ Hecuba.n16/CHRONICLESnPublishers and Sinnersnby E. Christian KopfFnnnlegible photographic reproduction, you would think thatnestablishing Joyce’s text would be short and easy work.nUnfortunately, Joyce rewrote most of the book while it wasnbeing typed for the printers and then again in proof, addingnsuch famous passages as Molly Bloom’s monologue thatnends the book, Only 14 percent of the Rosenbach manuscriptnended up as is in the first edition of Ulysses, andnone-third of the text is brand new. One typist gave up onndeciphering Joyce’s handwriting, while the husband ofnanother threw part of the manuscript into the fire in a fit ofnanger. The book was set up in type in Dijon, France by anteam of 26 French typesetters, none of whom knew Englishnor ever learned to read Joyce’s distinctive handwriting. Suchneasy and common words as “Hackney cabs” and “wife”nwere transmogrified into “Stackney cass” and “urbe.” Joycensuffered from poor eyesight and missed many mistakes. Tonmake matters worse, a friend who helped him introduced hisnown changes into the text. The first edition was a typographicalndisaster, and a slip apologizing for the misprints wasninserted. Some errors were removed, but more (estimated atn1,700) were added over the years. This already complicatednsummary considerably simplifies the whole story.nThe first American edition, published with a great deal ofnhuffing and puffing from Random House about its courageousnstand against censorship, was taken not from ancorrected version of the first edihon, but from a piratedn