JOYCE, James. Finnegans Wake.

London: Faber & Faber, 1952. Octavo. pp. [ii], 628, 2 [Corrections of misprints]. Red cloth, titled in gilt. A near fine copy in very good dust jacket.
No copy of this edition located on COPAC or WorldCat. Originally published in 1939.
Joyce's last and most innovative work in a style which he referred to as great part of every human experience is passed in a state which cannot be rendered sensible by the use of wide-awake language, cutanddry grammar and go-ahead. Throughout the (as in a dream), the characters appear in many guises and undergo numerous transmutations that range from the mythological to the geographical.
As to the exact identity of the dreamer (or dreamers), there is speculation and mystery. Possibilities are that the dreamer is Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker or one of his family members, or his mystic avatar, Finn MacCool; or the dreamer is Joyce himself, or the reader, or Joyce and the reader together. Any and all combinations may be possible. Joyce began writing Finnegans Wake in 1922, the same year Ulysseswas published. Compared to that book, Finnegans Wake took longer to write, was conceived and executed under a greater range of symbolic and mythic guidelines, was dictated to more famous amanuenses, among them Samuel Beckett, was used as a weapon of revenge by Joyce, who mocked in it the people who had offended him in short, it was the inscription on the walls of eternity of James Joyce's feelings, his prejudices and his obsessions (The Scandal of Ulysses, 55). Joyce insisted that each word, each sentence had several meanings and that the ideal lecteur should devote his lifetime to it, like the Koran" (Connolly, The Modern Movement).