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VI.I.45.a.

VI.I.45.a [VI.H.4.a]: Finnegans Wake Emendations and Errata: Errata Inscribed in an Unbound Author’s Copy of the First Edition of Finnegans Wake (1940):


General Description

The manuscript is a sewn but unbound author’s copy of the first English edition of Finnegans Wake (Slocum and Cahoon, A47), with a detached printed dust jacket, complete as published except for pp. 627 and 628 that were not with the manuscript when it arrived in Buffalo.

Faber and Faber sent this particular author’s copy to Joyce specifically for the purpose of marking "corrections" (see Faber and Faber to Paul Léon; 30 August 1939; JJPL 189). While in St Gerand-le-Puy in late August and September 1940, Joyce and Léon used this copy of Finnegans Wake to make corrections to the first printing of the first edition. Subsequently, a partially accurate and incomplete typescript and at least one carbon were made from this manuscript (MSS VI.I.45.b.1 and 45.b.2).

See Slocum and Cahoon, A47, for further bibliographical details about the printed first edition of Finnegans Wake. For a discussion of the textual status of these manuscripts, see Clive Hart’s "Introduction" to A Concordance to "Finnegans Wake" and his "The Hound and Type-bed: Further Notes on the Text of ‘Finnegans Wake‘," in A Wake Newslitter (Vol. III, No. 4, August 1966, pp. 77–84).

The corrections are in black ink and lead pencil Paul Léon’s and James Joyce’s hands in the margins of most pages.


Publication

This manuscript has not been reproduced, but see MSS VI.I.43.b.


Other Markings

The pencil numbers next to corrections indicate line numbers in text.