Author Description

In Zurich in 1918 and 1919, the English painter Frank Budgen and the Irish writer James Joyce met almost daily to walk, talk, and drink wine; their talk, among other things, was of the complex novel Joyce was then writing. This captivating study is the record of these conversations, and of a continuing friendship, as well as an acute critical commentary on the work itself. The only first-hand account available of the growth of Ulysses, the book is here reissued in its original form, together with Budgen's essays of 1939-41 on Finnegan's Wake, his deeply felt obituary of Joyce, and his "Further Recollections" of 1955. An introduction by Joyce scholar Clive Hart draws on much unpublished material to trace the history of the book, and pay a personal tribute to Frank Budgen, his friend, who died in 1971 at the age of eighty-nine.