Ulysses by James Joyce: Great Books Explained

Please consider supporting this channel on Patreon, thanks! or if you prefer a one-off donation - This video is dedicated to my great friends, and Joyce aficionado’s Jean and Derry O’Sullivan. Even before James Joyce’s Ulysses was published it was causing trouble. Short excerpts appeared in a review magazine, and the US postal service claiming it was pornography refused to deliver the magazines and then burnt all the copies. Any publisher that thought about publishing Ulysses had to weigh up the possibility of being prosecuted for obscenity against the potential of bringing a masterpiece into the world. Most publishers wouldn’t touch it, but Sylvia Beach, owner of the Shakespeare and Co. bookshop in Paris, decided the risk was worth taking, and in 1922 Ulysses was published in Paris. It is famously hard to read, and many never finish it, but the novel would go on