An idea Joyce had in 1906 for a story called ‘Ulysses’ never got any further than the title, but by 1907 Joyce planned to turn his story into a novel. He started writing Ulysses in Trieste in March 1914 but put it aside again, and only completed the first three episodes at Locarno in Switzerland in October 1917. As each episode was finished, Joyce had it typed and sent copies to Ezra Pound who sent them on to the publishers, though sometimes only after making cuts in the text. When publication in the Little Review stopped in September 1920, Joyce was still writing the longest episode, episode fifteen, which he claimed to have drafted eight times in six months. While Ulysses was being printed, Joyce added a third of the book as we know it, but he was often so busy adding new material that mistakes went uncorrected, and the first edition of Ulysses contained hundreds of errors.

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