JAMES JOYCE: THE CATS OF COPENHAGEN

BACK IN FEBRUARY, my post on James Joyce's picture book The Cat and the Devil went slightly viral when it was announced that a small Irish publisher would be publishing a new picture book by Joyce entitled The Cats of Copenhagen. The circumstances around this event were slightly controversial (refer back to the original post), so it was unclear if the book would ever be available to the general public at an affordable price. Just last week, Scribner published an American edition, which can be found in stores now.

Unlike The Cat and the Devil, there isn't a strong narrative in The Cats of Copenhagen. It's comprised mainly of absurd observations about cats and policemen and crossing streets. Its tone is somewhere between Ruth Krauss's A Hole is to Dig and the works of Edward Gorey. Casey Sorrow's single color line illustrations resonate with the spare text so that each page is a whole idea, the words and art almost a single lexical unit. In short, it's a wonderful book. But I haven't tested it out on any kids yet.

UPDATE: Ithys Press, the original publisher of The Cats of Copenhagen asked me to mention the work of typographer Michael Caine, who hand set the type for the book. From Anastasia Herbert at Ithys: "That extraordinary setting was all done by hand with lead and wooden type from rare, antique founts in his collection." To see more on Michael Caine see Ithys Press's blog here.

All images are copyrighted © and owned by their respective holders.

JAMES JOYCE: THE CAT AND THE DEVIL UK EDITION

ABOUT A WEEK BEFORE news broke that a new James Joyce picture book was to be published, I discovered (through this site) that my usually exhaustive research had somehow missed an English-language edition of James Joyce's only other picture book, The Cat and the Devil: the first UK edition, published by Faber and Faber in 1965, and illustrated by Gerald Rose.

Gerald Rose shot through the ranks of British children's illustrators when he won the prestigious Kate Greenaway Medal with his third picture book, Old Winkle and the Seagulls (1960), so it is no surprise that he was handed the honor of illustrating Joyce's book five years later.

The book alternates between lush four-color paintings (which bring Maira Kalman's work to mind), and kinetic black and white line drawings.

Despite the appeal of Rose's bold colors, it is in his black and white illustrations that the book really feels in sync with Joyce's text. The visual jokes and the almost sketchy line work match Joyce's storytelling and the spirit in which the story was originally written.

I will always prefer the Richard Erdoes edition, which is more consistent in its composition, but it is hard to resist Rose's portrayal of Joyce as the devil (an idea suggested by Joyce himself in his postscript).

And this cat. Of all the editions, this is the best cat.

For more of the actual story The Cat and the Devil, refer back to my very first blog post, linked up above and again right here.

(In the interim between my finding out about this edition and getting my hands on it, one of my readers, Simon Sterg over at Yahoo! 360, also alerted me of my oversight.)

All images are copyrighted © and owned by their respective holders.

JAMES JOYCE: THE CATS OF COPENHAGEN

SEVENTY-SIX YEARS AFTER IT WAS WRITTEN, and forty-eight years after the publication in picture book form of his first children's book (We Too Were Children's first blog post ever), James Joyce has another children's book out: The Cats of Copenhagen.

If you have €300-€1200 that is.

Like his first children's book, The Cat and the Devil, The Cats of Copenhagen was written in a letter to James Joyce's grandson Stephen while Joyce was living in Denmark and his grandson in Paris. Unlike The Cat and the Devil, which originally appeared in Joyce's collected letters, The Cats of Copenhagen has not been previously published in any form. This new edition was made possible, according to the publisher Ithys Press, when James Joyce's works entered the public domain in Europe on January 1, 2012. That position has sparked some controversy, however, as the owner of the letter, the Zurich James Joyce Foundation, claims that it has yet to be determined if unpublished works are also in the public domain.

The Ithys Press edition is to be published in limited edition of 200 copies: 26 lettered, 170 numbered, and 4 Hors Commerce.

Here's hoping a popular edition will be published soon.

All images are copyrighted © and owned by their respective holders.

JAMES JOYCE'S THE CAT AND THE DEVIL BACK IN PRINT!

MY VERY FIRST WE TOO WERE CHILDREN, MR. BARRIE POST was on James Joyce's letter-to-his-grandson-turned-picture-book The Cat and the Devil. The book has been illustrated and published two times, in 1964 with illustrations by Richard Erdoes and in 1981 in the US (1978 in France) illustrated by Roger Blachon. I received an email today from the Swiss publisher SJW Schweizerisches Jugendschriftenwerk that the Roger Blachon edition is now available in five languages including English. It doesn't appear to be listed on Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk, but it can be ordered directly from SJW on their website here in the section Google translates as "Swiss youth written work". Their press information, including the below image, isn't in English, so I can't offer more. It's just good to see an out-of-print book getting a second chance.

JAMES JOYCE: THE CAT AND THE DEVIL

ON AUGUST 10, 1936, JAMES JOYCE started a letter to his grandson Stevie: "I sent you a little cat filled with sweets a few days ago but perhaps you do not know the story about the cat of Beaugency."  So began what was to be Joyce's only known story written for children.  First published in Letters of James Joyce (1957) edited by Stuart Gilbert, this letter to Stevie has been subsequently published as a picture book in English two separate times: in 1964 by Dodd, Mead & Company, illustrated by Richard Erdoes, and in 1981 by Schocken Books (from a 1978 French edition), illustrated by Roger Blachon.

From the inside flap of the 1964 edition: "This charming little fable was written by James Joyce in a letter to his grandson "Stevie."  It is an incongruous but delicious mixture of Irish wit and French folklore that explains the magic overnight construction of an actual bridge across the Loire, a very old bridge over which any young reader who might doubt the tale may still walk or ride his bike this very day."

The story is a legend that has been applied to several bridges over the years.  In this version, it is the people of Beaugency who need a bridge to be built over the Loire River.

The lord mayor of Beaugency makes a deal with the Devil.  The Devil will build the much-needed bridge over the Loire River in one night on the condition that the first soul to cross the bridge will belong to the Devil.  Upon completion of the bridge the next morning, the mayor sends a cat across the bridge into the Devil's arms, fulfilling his end of the bargain but foiling the Devil's plans for acquiring a human soul.

The devil, needless to say, is quite perturbed, but he retires like a gentleman.

Joyce tells the story in a straightforward grandfatherly tone, but can not resist, in the end, a bit of word play and self reference.

In a similar moment of playfulness, Richard Erdoes made his own visual addition to the scene of the completed bridge.  Is that Madeline and her class on the bridge?

In 2005, a Croatian edition of Joyce's book came out, illustrated by Tomislav Torjanac (see below).  For more images from that edition, visit Tomislav Torjanac's website here.