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The Rarest Publication: Joyce reading John F. Taylor’s speech from the “Aeolus” episode of Ulysses
- Paul Dubsky
- Mar 26
- 2 min read
This is one of only two surviving recordings of James Joyce’s voice — a fiery passage from the “Aeolus” episode of Ulysses, in which Joyce channels the orator John F. Taylor with the full flourish of a Cork accent. The reading is sharp, musical, and unmistakably performative. It was commissioned in Paris, 1924, by Sylvia Beach, the American-born bookseller and publisher who first brought Ulysses into the world. At the time, Beach imagined the recording as a moment of literary history in the making.
She even planned to invite journalists to the session — an early instinct for literary publicity — but was met with indifference by the record label, His Master’s Voice (HMV). The producer saw no future in such things. Recordings by authors were anomalies then, curiosities at best. He foresaw no profit and insisted that the company’s name be kept entirely out of it.
Beach pressed ahead nonetheless, authorizing the creation of twenty or thirty discs. But the material was brittle — shellac, not vinyl — and nearly all of them shattered with time. What remains is not a commercial release, but a ghost: a private preservation of voice, time, and spirit. Joyce’s voice, rising out of static, is a relic of an era before authors were heard.
And yet, the delicious irony is pitch-perfect. Today, writers are everywhere — reading their own audiobooks, guesting on podcasts, live-streaming launch events. Voices sell stories. Voices are stories. What Sylvia Beach quietly preserved a century ago is now a cultural norm. But none are quite like this one. This is Joyce, speaking.
Welcome to the journey.
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