From Richard Ellmann’s biography James Joyce:
Joyce plunged back into work on Ulysses.
The early chapters had been brought to the point where they could be published. He entered into correspondence with Miss Weaver and [Ezra] Pound about the possibility of printing the book first in serial form … Miss Weaver was more than willing, and offered 50 pounds for the rights.
In December and January Joyce sent the three opening chapters to Pound, who was delighted with them. After reading the first, he complimented Joyce on December 18 with the dreary humor of his pseudo-American lingo, ‘Wall, Mr Joice, I recon your a damn fine writer, that’s what I recon’. An’ I recon’ this here work o’ yourn is some concarn’d literature. you can take it from me, an’ I’m a jedge.’ Pound was then in the course of shifting his primary American allegiance from Harriet Monroe’s Poetry to the Little Review of Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap, which was more avant-garde in its interests …
The two women were interested in Joyce but were not allowed to communicate directly with him; Pound, acting as intermediary, discouraged such an approach and, as they later complained, treated Joyce like a private possession.
They were none the less delighted when Pound sent them the Telemachiad [a section in the book] in February. No sooner did Margaret Anderson read the opening words of the Proteus episode, “Ineluctable modality of the visible; at least that if no more, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide …’ than she cried, ‘This is the most beautiful thing we’ll ever have. We’ll print it if it’s the last effort of our lives.’
