The Dennis Wheatley 'Museum' - DW's Library

Dennis Wheatley's Library - modern first editions
James Joyce's ‘Ulysses’

The cover of a first edition
of James Joyce's Ulysses

DW's earlier bookplate,
subsequently detached
from the volume

Click on the image to enlarge

For a transcript click here

A jewel in the crown of DW's Library - and one which did not make it into the Blackwell's catalogue - was his signed first edition of James Joyce's Ulysses.

The book was published by Shakespeare and Company in Paris in 1922. Of a print run of 1,000 numbered copies, 100 copies (numbered 1-100) were printed on Dutch handmade paper and signed by Joyce, 150 copies (101-250) in a large paper edition, and a further 750 copies (251-1,000) in a small format 'trade' issue. DW had copy number 22.

As his earlier bookplate shows (it was detached from the book), he bought it in July 1923 from the London Foreign Book Co. and he paid the grand sum of £2.17.6.

It was a good investment - it would be worth in excess of £150,000 today.

While recognising its ground-breaking novelty, DW did not think much of it – on his bookplate he describes it as ‘The ravings of a lunatic possessed of extra-ordinary erudition’.

References : Officer and Temporary Gentleman page 148
Phil Baker pp 233-4
Modern value courtesy of Nigel Burwood of Any Amount of Books, January 2017

Provenance : The bookplate – private collection. The whereabouts of DW’s copy of Ulysses is not known