Page 709 of the final corrected page proofs of Ulysses (1922), James Joyce Collection, Harry Ransom Center.
Read the tenth article in a series devoted to objects that tell the story of women who supported James Joyce and the publication of his landmark novel, Ulysses. This blog series is running in conjunction with Women and the Making of Ulysses, an exhibition on show now at the Harry Ransom Center. In this week’s instalment, Clare Hutton explores Joyce’s inspiration for Ulysses famous last chapter, in which Molly Bloom reflects upon her day. ‘None of the female characters are as clever and accomplished’, argues Hutton, ‘as the quartet of female publishers and editors who worked so hard to make the achievement of Ulysses possible: Margaret Anderson, Sylvia Beach, Jane Heap and Harriet Shaw Weaver’.
A single page from Helen Joyce’s “Portrait of the Artist by his Daughter-in-law,” begun in 1955. James Joyce Collection, Harry Ransom Center, 7.3
Read the ninth article in a series devoted to objects that tell the story of women who supported James Joyce and the publication of his landmark novel, Ulysses. This blog series is running in conjunction with Women and the Making of Ulysses, an exhibition on show now at the Harry Ransom Center. In this week’s instalment, Clare Hutton explores Helen Joyce’s memoir of the Joyce family, noting its importance to a feminist history of Ulysses.
Jefferson Market Police Court in New York’s Greenwich Village, 1921
Read the eighth article in a series devoted to objects that tell the story of women who supported James Joyce and the publication of his landmark novel, Ulysses. This blog series is running in conjunction with Women and the Making of Ulysses, an exhibition on show now at the Harry Ransom Center. In this week’s instalment, Clare Hutton explores what it was like to but put on trial for publishing Ulysses, remembering the contributions of Jane Heap and Margaret Anderson to the novel’s notoriety.
Have you attended our Women and the Making of Joyce’s Ulysses exhibition at the Harry Ransom Center? Have you attended one of our affiliated events, either online or in person? (See full list below.)
If so, then we want to hear from you! Share your experience of the exhibition and/or event series to help us determine their success, and to inform future research. The survey should take no more than ten minutes to complete.
Letter from James Joyce to Ludmila Bloch Savitsky, June 20, 1921
Not only did Savitsky agree to do the translation she also offered Joyce and his family the opportunity to live in her apartment, free of charge, an opportunity which Joyce accepted with alacrity.
Dr Clare Hutton (Loughborough University)
Read the seventh article in a series devoted to objects that tell the story of women who supported James Joyce and the publication of his landmark novel, Ulysses. This blog series is running in conjunction with Women and the Making of Ulysses, an exhibition on show now at the Harry Ransom Center. In this week’s instalment, Clare Hutton explores Joyce’s relationship with Ludmila Bloch Savitsky (1881–1957), who did much to introduce Joyce to French literary circles by authoring the first French translation of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
Dr Clare Hutton (Loughborough University) delivering her Bloomsday Lecture: “‘a gaud of amber beads’: Ulysses, Feminism and Biography”.
Named after Leopold Bloom, the protagonist of James Joyce’s Ulysses, Bloomsday is a commemoration and celebration of the life of Joyce, observed annually on 16 June, the day Ulysses takes place in 1904.
On Bloomsday (June 16 2022), Dr Clare Hutton and the Harry Ransom Center (University of Texas at Austin) collaborated to deliver an afternoon of Joycean celebration. Audiences gathered for guided tours of the exhibition Women and the Making of Joyce’s Ulysses and a lecture by Hutton: “‘a gaud of amber beads’: Ulysses, Feminism and Biography”.
Watch Hutton’s lecture on demand here.
Following this, the audience enjoyed an exclusive film screening of BBC Arena’s feature-length documentary: James Joyce’s Ulysses.
Egoist edition of Ulysses, containing a message to Jane Heap by James Joyce in 1922.
Heap was one among a circle of gay women who supported Ulysses (others include Margaret Anderson, Sylvia Beach, and Adrienne Monnier). That they did so can be attributed to a belief in the power of Joyce’s vision, a willingness to engage in championing libertarian causes, a collective desire for greater candour about sexual preferences and sexual experience, and broad support for the fight against censorship.
Dr Clare Hutton (Loughborough University)
Read the sixth article in a series devoted to objects that tell the story of women who supported James Joyce and the publication of his landmark novel, Ulysses. This blog series is running in conjunction with Women and the Making of Ulysses, an exhibition on show now at the Harry Ransom Center. In this week’s instalment, Clare Hutton explores the belief in artistic freedom and sexual expression that led Jane Heap to defend Ulysses in the courtroom.
Dr Clare Hutton (Loughborough University) guides Ambassador Mulhall through the ‘Women and the Making of Ulysses’ exhibition (30 April, Harry Ransom Center)
On 30 April 2022, the Irish Ambassador to the United States visited ‘Women and the Making of Joyce’s Ulysses’ at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin. This is a major Ulysses exhibition curated by Dr Clare Hutton, Reader in English and Digital Humanities, Loughborough.
The exhibition is sponsored by the Irish government, and highlights the role which women played in enabling Joyce to write and publish Ulysses, a work which is regarded as the most important and successfully experimental novel of the twentieth century.
Ambassador Mulhall gave a lecture on ‘Molly, Gerty and Mrs Breen: The Women of Joyce’s Ulysses‘ based on his recent book (Ulysses: A Reader’s Odyssey, 2022) while Dr Hutton gave a lecture entitled ‘”Smart lady typists”: Ulysses and the Women Behind the Scenes’ based on the exhibition, and her monograph, Serial Encounters: Ulysses and the Little Review (OUP, 2019). She also introduced the premier of a 25 minute documentary entitled Remarkable Women: The Story of Ulysses which includes an interview with her about the thinking behind the exhibition.
Dr Steve Enniss, Director of the Ransom Center, said ‘it is an honour to be able to welcome Ambassador Mulhall to the HRC, home of an unrivalled Joyce collection, and a place which many researchers of the Irish literary tradition have visited in order to consult our outstanding collections and manuscripts.
Ambassador Mulhall said ‘in this year when we celebrate both the centenary of Joyce’s Ulysses and the foundation of the Irish state, it is wonderful to see the innovative way in which Joyce’s work is being celebrated. Women clearly played a formative role in helping Joyce to find a way forward. His publishers, Margaret Anderson, Jane Heap and Sylvia Beach, and Harriet Shaw Weaver were clearly crucial to the success of Ulysses’.
Dr Hutton says she is ‘honoured by the support of the Irish Department for Foreign Affairs. Even with Covid and the practical challenges which the pandemic has posed for work of this kind, the exhibition has been a pleasure to work on, and I am delighted that it is attracting so many visitors back to the Ransom Center after the prolonged closures of 2020 and 2021. I am also very pleased that the emphasis on under acknowledged female labour is proving to be so popular with visitors.
Harriet Shaw Weaver’s Accounts Page (British Library, Add Ms 57347(f166))
Weaver did not obviously leave her signature on Joyce’s oeuvre but it is clear that, without her generosity, both Ulysses and Finnegans Wake might never have been completed.
Dr Clare Hutton (Loughborough University)
Read the fifth article in a series devoted to objects that tell the story of women who supported James Joyce and the publication of his landmark novel, Ulysses. In this week’s instalment, Clare Hutton (Loughborough University) explores Harriet Shaw Weaver’s role as patron of Joyce’s literary endeavours.
On 21st April 2022, the James Joyce Centre (Dublin) hosted an online conversation between Lucy Brennan Shiel, Susan Leybourne, Marion Byrne, and Clare Hutton, reflecting upon Harriet Shaw Weaver’s important and complex role in the creation and patronage of James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922). Hosted by Darina Gallagher (Director of the James Joyce Centre), the event explored the speakers’ memorial tributes to Weaver in the light of Ulysses‘ 100th anniversary. These included a short film, ‘Weaver of the Wind’ by Brennan Shiel,The Ulysses 100 project e-book by Leybourne and Byrne, and Hutton’s ‘Women and the Making of Ulysses‘ exhibition (showing until 17th July, The Harry Ransom Centre, TX). Watch the full event above.
