An unpublished, sexually explicit letter from James Joyce to Nora Barnacle Joyce is to be included in an auction of Joyce materials at Sotheby's in London on July 8th next.
The letter is the first of a sequence of such letters which Joyce sent her from 44 Fontenoy Street, Dublin, in December 1909, when she was in Trieste and he was in Dublin setting up the Volta cinema.
The other letters are printed in Richard Ellmann's Selected Letters of James Joyce, but this one, which Joyce refers to in a subsequent letter, was believed to have been lost. Its content is clear from Joyce's own reference to it as "extraordinary" and from other allusions. The letter carries an estimate of £50,000 to £60,000 sterling.
The collection also includes two other letters from Joyce to Nora, both written in 1904, before the couple left Ireland.
One, dated September 12th, 1904, has been published already, but the fact that it is written from the Martello Tower in Sandycove, where Joyce was staying at the time, means that its estimate of £10,000 to £15,000 may be on the low side.
The third letter is dated October 3rd, 1904, and was sent from 7 St Peter's Terrace, Cabra. This may well be the last Joyce wrote to Nora before they left Ireland on October 8th, 1904. It too has been published, although with a different date.
An intriguing item is a telegram from Nora to Joyce from Trieste, dated apparently November 21st, 1909, and consisting solely of the Italian word "Si" - Yes. Much speculation may surround it.
Also for sale is the sole surviving set of proofs of the abortive printing of Dubliners by Maunsel and Co in Dublin in 1912 (estimate £60,000 to £80,000). The print run was destroyed following a quarrel between Joyce and the publisher, George Roberts, and this was the one set of proofs that Joyce managed to retrieve.
The collection also includes copy 308 of the first edition of Ulysses, inscribed "To Stannie/ Jim/ Paris 11 Feb 1922". This is estimated at £70,000 to £90,000. This is an exceptional copy of Ulysses since very few are inscribed in such a personal way.
Joyce's bronze medal won for singing at the Feis Ceoil in 1904 is also on offer, giving the lie to the belief that he threw it into the Liffey in disgust.
The collection comes from a descendant of Joyce's brother Stanislaus and will be exhibited in Dublin in early June, although it is believed the 1909 letter will not be on public display.