JOYCE, James. Chamber Music. [AUTHOR’S FIRST BOOK]

London, Elkin Mathews, 1907. First edition, second variant. pp. 40. Light green cloth, gilt lettered on upper cover and spine. Title within an elaborate design which includes columns, a harpsichord, drapery and scrolls with simulated musical notations. near fine in a fine example of the publisher’s unprinted glassine dust jacket. There have been a number of different guesses as to how many copies Mathews bound in each variant, but it is likely that copies in the second and third variants were bound simultaneously in or about 1911, after the first 205 copies in the first binding had sold. The present copy is in Slocum and Cahoon’s second variant binding, with the cloth in a slightly darker shade of green than the first, and with the pages trimmed slightly shorter, resulting in some poems in the third gathering appearing poorly centred; the third variant has thin transparent wove endpapers, the second has thick wove endpapers.
Slocum & Cahoon A3. Small octavo. Original light green cloth, spine and front cover lettered in gilt.Illustrated title page. Spine slightly toned, extremities rubbed and a little frayed at spine ends, endpapers browned and a little marked, front hinge partly cracked but firm, contents clean: a very good copy.