W.H. Lamar to John Quinn
Post Office Department; Office of the Solicitor.
W.H. Lamar, Solicitor, to John Quinn, Typed Letter (Copy), June 18, 1919, 3 pp.
Little review (Chicago, Ill.).
Records, 1914-1964.
Call Number: UWM Manuscript Collection 1: Box 4, Folder 3
Archives, Golda Meir Library
In a letter arguing the mailability of The Little Review to the Solicitor General, Quinn had maintained that Ulysses was comprehensible only to a literary elite, and was of high artistic merit. He included a circular praising the literary merit of Joyce's critically acclaimed Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The Solicitor General summarily rejected Quinn's arguments:
[The entire magazine] is unmailable under Section 480 of the Postal Laws and Regulations (Section 211 of the Criminal Code of the United States). This decision is based upon the magazine as a whole, and upon the cuts contained therein as well as the printed matter.
This exchange was the beginning of the legal battles which would halt the Ulysses serialization and lead to the suppression of the text in the U.S.
Extract from some Press Notices of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce.
London: Egoist Press, 1916.
Call Number: (RARE) PR 6019 .O9 P6443x 1916
Special Collections, Golda Meir Library