User:Spicy/James Joyce's letters to Nora

In 1909, James Joyce wrote a series of erotic letters to his wife Nora Barnacle. The letters have attracted popular and academic interest for their insights into the couple's relationship as well as their explicit and scatological content.

History
The letters were originally part of Stanislaus Joyce's personal collection. The collection was sold to Cornell University in 1957 with Richard Ellmann retaining publication rights. Ellmann's publishers and Joyce's estate objected to the publication of the erotic letters, but Ellmannn argued that this was preferable to their being leaked illicitly, and that Joyce's "mission as an artist was to tell the truth about the body [...] I think we are keeping faith with him if we publish his letters as he wrote them". Ellmann ultimately ceded to some of their demands and published a redacted version of the letters in 1966. In the same year, Hélène Cixous shared excerpts of the letters without permission from Joyce's family. It was in 1975 that the letters were finally published in full in Ellmann's Selected Letters of James Joyce.

In 2004, one of the letters sold at Sotheby's for £240,800.

Content
Ellmann's Selected Letters compiled a total of 64 letters from Joyce to Nora. The letters of interest for their erotic content were written in 1909, during which time Nora stayed in Trieste, Italy with their young daughter Lucia while Joyce travelled to Dublin with their son Giorgio. Soon after arriving in Dublin, Joyce had heard rumours that Nora had engaged in an affair early in their relationship. He would address these accusations in the letters.

Analysis
Upon their publication in 1975, the letters attracted commentary from writers and literary critics as well as pornographic magazines such as Hustler.

Sources