Chamber Music.

Bookseller Notes

The author's first book, initially to be titled 'A Book of Thirty Songs for Lovers'; 509 copies were printed. There were three issues, with identification resting upon the paper used for the endpapers and the centring of the letterpress on the page in signature C; the dating of this second variant, per Slocum & Cahoon, is obscure.Joyce faced a series of reverses before a publisher could be found for 'Chamber Music'. The key figure in its publication was Arthur Symons, who had first encountered the young Irishman's work in 1902 and in the following years attempted to place them with Duckworth, Constable, and Grant Richards, without success for differing reasons, before alighting on Elkin Mathews to whom he recommended it for the Vigo Cabinet series as 'a book of verse which is of the most genuine lyric quality of any new work I have read for many years', and secured a contract for his cause.