Skip to Content

IV.A.5: Pomes Penyeach

Later Holograph Draft of “Alone” in “Work in Progress”/Finnegans Wake MS VI.B.16 (1924):1

Material Description and Collation

The poem is on pp. [65h], [123j] and [125h] of “Work in Progress”/Finnegans Wake notebook MS VI.B.16. Joyce wrote the various fragments of the draft horizontally in the notebook in black ink.


Measurements

The manuscript measures 13.6 x 21.1(19.4 + 1.7) cm.


Contents

The drafts are variant versions of the opening lines of the poem “Alone,” which Joyce first published in Pomes Penyeach (Paris: Shakespeare and Company, 1927; see Slocum and Cahoon A24), p. [11].


Dating

Although he wrote the poem in Zurich in 1916, Joyce probably wrote this manuscript version in April–May 1924, therefore, after MS IV.A.2.


Publication

This manuscript has been reproduced in black and white photo-facsimile on JJA 1.190–193 and JJA 32.389, 418 and 419 and then in The Finnegans Wake Notebooks at Buffalo: VI.B.16, edited by Vincent Deane, Daniel Ferrer and Geert Lernout (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2003), pp. 92, 150 and 151 and “Alone” was subsequently published in PSW, p. 60.


  1. La Hune, item 157; Slocum and Cahoon, item E.7.b.