ULYSSES

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First

Select an episode from the dropdown menu above. This will take you to the top level (published) draft of the chosen episode, our default starting point for exploration of the text. A side menu appears, highlighting the current document in the draft hierarchy. (Top and side menus scroll and collapse.)

Choose any 'draft level' from the side menu that adjoins each Episode. Nested within the categories of editions, proofs, typescripts, faircopy, and protodrafts are links to all available earlier versions of an episode. Also available here is the 'isotext', our synoptic edition.

Then

Customise your view to display or hide 'Notons' and 'Footnotes' (indicated in blue and by the º symbol, respectively). Click a noton to explore Joyce's use of notebook units. Hover over a footnote for details of textual variants. Notons and footnotes are 'on' by default; toggle them 'off' for a clear-reading view.

Other Options

Select an Episode from the 'Draft Analysis' menu for a detailed account of the compositional history of that episode.
Click on 'Notebooks' for transcriptions of the notebooks and notesheets, a chronology of their composition, and a list of sources.
Consult the 'Appendix' for four chronological lists related to Ulysses: publications, letters, addresses, and a compositional history.

Digital versions of the 1922 and 2017 printed editions

Page proofs and placards of the 1922 edition

Typescripts

Faircopy

Proto drafts

The Isotext (a synoptic edition)

Notons (textual elements linked to notebook entries)

Footnotes (details of textual variants)

Draft Analysis (compositional histories)

Notebooks (linked transcriptions)

Appendix (textual and biographical chronologies)

Updates & further acknowledgements

We periodically update the site to add new features and/or to incorporate new information (sources, scholarly attributions, revisions, corrections, etc.) as we develop them and/or as they are made known to us.

August 2018: In addition to implementing a number of corrections and revisions, on the suggestion of a correspondent we have added a link to further information at the head of each draft level and notebook page.
December 2018: For each episode of Ulysses we have added a new section detailing the differences between the 2017 and 1984 editions. We have also added, in the Editions section, a link to Ronan Crowley and Joshua Schäuble's digital edition of the right-hand pages (the synoptic text) of Hans Walter Gabler's 1984 Critical and Synoptic Edition.
For corrections and new information (including new sources) for notebook UN1 (NLI.3) and UN2 (VI.D.7) we would like to thank Ronan Crowley and Joshua Schäuble. We would also like to thank the correspodent mentioned above for further errata.
January 2019: We are including for the first time in digital format Phillip F. Herring's seminal edition of the Ulysses notesheets, as revised and re-arranged by Danis Rose. The re-arrangement consists in dividing the original sheets into numbered sectors (the equivalent of notebook pages) representing the several columns and margins that were presented spatially in Herring's 1972 edition.
Acting on a suggestion by Ronan Crowley we have updated all the notebook/notesheet links to include direct links (from the notons) to the relevant notebook/notesheet edition. We have also begun the task (also suggested by Ronan) of highlighting the particular phrases lifted by Joyce from his sources.
April 2019: For further corrections and additions (placings and sources) we are grateful to Ronan Crowley and to a correspondent. We have also included the first draft of a “Chicken's Guide” to Ulysses
May 21, 2019: For further corrections and additions (placings and sources) we are grateful to Ronan Crowley and to a correspondent. We have also included the first draft of a new set of “virtual” notesheets to provide a repository for material from known sourcebooks that are absent from the extant Ulysses notebooks and notesheets.
September 15, 2019: For this update numerous corrections have been made to the notebooks, notesheets and their associated notons. Some links have been reconfigured.
September 17, 2019: This update incorporates details provided by Ronan Crowley of two additional sources for the Nausicaa notesheets.
October 29, 2019: This update incorporates numerous corrections and revisions; details of an important Ithaka notesheet source provided by Ronan Crowley; five Oxen notesheet sources by Chrissie Van Mierlo; and a large number of revisions to the Penelope notesheets. For details and links see the table of Ulysses notebook and notesheet sources.
November 12, 2019: This update incorporates further corrections and additional material for the notesheets and notebooks.
November 25, 2019: This update incorporates numerous corrections and additional material for the notesheets and notebooks; including a batch of new sources for UN6 (NLI.4) found by Ronan Crowley.
December 24, 2019: Robert Janusko has provided a batch of new sources together with corrections and additional references (including an important embryological source found by Udo Benzenhöfer) for the Oxen notesheets.
January 20, 2020: Ronan Crowley has provided a number of new sources and other corrections for Notebooks 6 and 7, while Danis Rose has added notes to Notebooks 5 and 7.
March 22, 2020: Ronan Crowley has provided further details and source readings for Notebook 7 and the Circe notesheets.
March 29, 2020: Thanks again to Ronan Crowley for Ulysses notebook/notesheet updates.
April 20, 2020: Thanks to Emily Bell for revisions to the proto-Proteus, and Ronan Crowley for UN1 (NLI.3).
June 6, 2020: For this major update, Stacey Herbert has re-designed the appearance of the notebooks, the notebook descriptions and the source lists. Additionally, an early Joyce notebook—JN1 (NLI.2A)—that was used in the writing of Staphen Hero, Dubliners, and Ulysses, has been added. Thanks are also due to Ronan Crowley and Emily Bell. Finally, an error in the revised programming was pointed out by Skaar.
June 9, 2020: First revision of notebook JN1. Thanks to Ronan Crowley.
June 17, 2020: In this update, the re-design has been extended to the draft analyis and the source lists. Thanks also to Vincent Deane and Skaar for corrections and revisions.
June 20, 2020: In this update, we have added a second early notebook—JN2, the Alphabet Notebook— and further revised JN1 with the help of Fran O'Rourke's essay on Joyce's use of Aristotle.
September 10, 2020: We have added another early “notebook”—JN0, the Epiphanies—as several of these were used in composing Ulysses. Thanks also to Ronan Crowley and to Skaar for further corrections and additions.
October 4, 2020: Because of its relevance (linkage) to the other early notebooks and for the notes it contains, we have added PN1, the “A Portrait Essay”.
October 12, 2020: The fourth early “notebook” relevant to Ulysses — GN1: the final set of Joyce's epiphanic prose-pieces now known as Giacomo Joyce — has been added to the JJDA.
October 22, 2020: Thanks to Ronan Crowley for further revisions.
November 14, 2020: Thanks to Ronan Crowley for revisions to the notesheets.
December 9 and 22, 2020: Thanks again to Ronan Crowley for revisions to the notesheets.
February 23, 2021: Thanks to Ronan Crowley for further revisions to the notesheets.
March 19, 2021: The major change to the Ulysses section of the JJDA is the addition of the fair copies of Stephen Hero and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
March 24, 2021: Following a suggestion of Ronan Crowley we have moved the “Doherty” fragment from the Ulysses subsection of the JJDA to the A Portrait subsection.
March 30, 2021: The principal change made to the site on this occasion has been to include notebook links to the A Portrait subsection.
April 1, 2021: Thanks to Ronan Crowley for UN3 notes.
June 9, 2021: Thanks to Ronan Crowley for inforation on previously “missing” draft and suggestions for improvement.
June 29, 2021: The structure of the the Ulysses section of the JJDA has been Substantially altered for this update. The main texts referred to are now the 2021 (available from Quercus as an inexpensive—less than £10—paperback) in place of the 2017 Folio text, and the 1986 version of the Gabler edition in place of the 1984 versionn. Re the notebooks, thanks to Ronan Crowley for information on new sources.
July 9, 2021: The principal change in today's update is the addition of an important source, A Text-Book of Physics by Wentworth and Hill, first identified by Yi Jean Chow in 2015.
September 26, 2021: The principal emendation in this update has been the addition of Notesheet 0, the dramatis personae (Herring 20 and most of 21). It was prepared by Danis Rose and John O'Hanlon in collaboration with Ronan Crowley. Thanks also to Raphael Slepon
October 1, 2021: Some errors in the above version have been corrected.

A Chicken's Guide to Ulysses

While its essential narrative is straightforward, even simple, and so unlike Finnegans Wake not in need of a guide, Ulysses has its own deep caverns and confusions, not least its plethora of contrary styles and its inconsistent grounding in Homer's Odyssey. Our chicken, late of the midden, turns up what fragments she can to aid the enthusiastic reader to enjoy some (but by no means all) of the extra dimensions of this extraordinary novel. Ulysses is a contraction of the Odyssey — itself already a contraction of life's journey into myth — into a single, ordinary day and night of an ordinary “family” (Leopold and Molly Bloom, and Stephen Dedalus, Bloom's substitute son) in an ordinary city, Dublin. Unlike Ulysses (the Roman name for Odysseus) Leopold Bloom is not a hero nor a master tactician nor a leader of men, though he is shrewd enough in his own quiet way. In this Guide, the reader is invited to explore the novel through a brief analysis of its structure — which Joyce “helpfully” wrote down in an intriguing “Schema” — and of its relation to its ancient Greek forebear.