The Ulysses Trials

'Hassett's combination of literary insight and legal dexterity...makes his book ...an original and subtly entertaining contribution to the history of modernist culture.' -Roy Foster The publishers of Ulysses by James Joyce were brought to trial and convicted of obscenity in the USA in 1921. The immortal prose, ultimately recognized as the greatest English language novel of the twentieth century, was first published by the pioneering literary magazine The Little Review. Its founder Margaret Anderson along with her publishing partner and lover, Jane Heap, were famously convicted of a crime for their extraordinary contribution to society. From then until its eventual publication in the US in 1934 the book ran the gamut of legal obstruction. The Ulysses Trials chronicles that progress and adds not only to the understanding of Joyce but also to the history of the laws of obscenity, censorship and freedom of speech. Its appeal is to Joyceans, all those interested in modernism and to the legal community and students of literature and law.

Joseph Hassett is a distinguished American lawyer and author of Yeats and the Muses (2012, Oxford University Press). He is based in Washington D.C.