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VI.B.36.

Work in Progress"/Finnegans Wake Notebook (1934)


Material Description

The notebook is a black cloth covered, hard board accounting ledger book. The insides of the boards and both sides of the flyleaves are blue paper. The cover and spine are cracked and worn but still mostly intact. The fore-edges are speckled red. The notebook is similar in kind to a common type of notebook Joyce used consistently but not exclusively from 1928 to 1938 (see also MSS VI.B.21, VI.B.26, VI.B.4, VI.B.24, VI.B.29, VI.B.28, VI.B.32, VI.B.33, VI.B.31, VI.B.38, and VI.B.41/VI.C.18).

Joyce’s notes are in lead pencil, except on p. [210] where he wrote "Lucia Joyce" in black ink. Joyce wrote some or all of the notes on pp. [100], [103], [125], [126], [127], [197], [216], and [217] upside down.

Joyce used red, blue, and green colored crayons to cross through notes he had used in his manuscripts.


Collation

The manuscript consists of 164 leaves (328 pages) of purple horizontal and purple and red vertical lined white wove paper in 14 stitched gatherings (the 1st and 14th gatherings are composed of 20 pages and the 2nd through 13th gatherings of 24 pages); none of the pages are detached. 307 pages as well as the front board verso, back board recto, and both sides of the back flyleaf, are inscribed; 23 are blank: pp. [053], [071], [081], [102], [130], [131], [149], [154], [155], [159], [165], [168], [169], [171], [173], [174], [175], [177], [179], [285], [322], [323], and [324].


Measurements

The manuscript measures 18.9 x 12.5 cm.


Pagination

The pages are not numbered.


Dating

Joyce compiled this notebook in 1934 in Paris, Belgium, and Switzerland (TD 32).


Publication

The manuscript has been reproduced in black and white photo-facsimile in JJA 37.281–444.


Notes

  Mme FranceRaphael, Joyce’s amanuensis, did not transcribe this notebook.