The text of Ulysses on this site is based on the digital transcription of the 1922 Shakespeare and Co. first printing of the novel, transcribed by Matthew Kochis and Patrick Belk for the Modernist Versions Project and made available for reuse under a Creative Commons license, CC BY-NC-SA 3.0. Ulysses editor Hans Walter Gabler has said that this edition "comes closest to what Joyce aimed for as the public text of Ulysses"*.
I have made multiple word-level changes to the Modernist Version project's text, explained below. I have not changed any mistakes or inaccuracies found in the printing of the first edition of Ulysses that were altered in later printings.
UPDATE: Where the Modernist Versions Project TXT transcription file differed from their PDF digitization of the book and I noticed the difference, I had originally noted changes on this page, but have halted that because of time constraints. When I'm finished proofing the novel, I'll collate the original transcription against my changes and post a list of the differences. Visit my Ulysses GitHub repository to access the digital transcription with my corrections and HTML formatting for your own use.
Corrections to transcription errors (incomplete, see above)
Throughout: I didn't record line breaks occuring in the middle of sentences that I corrected (e.g. on page 25, I removed a line break after "under" in the penultimate line). These will all be corrected in the text shared in my Ulysses GitHub repository.
Page 1: Substituted "Chrysostomos" for "Chryspstomos" (rectifying transcription error).
Page 5: "Thalatta!" for "Thalalta!"
Page 9: "bitter" for "fitter"
Page 18: "mother s" for "mother's"
Page 22: "I'm" for "Fm" on two different lines
Page 23: "tonight. Home" for "tonight- Home"
Page 24: "Cochrane's" for "Gochrane's"
Page 24: "— Yes, sir" for "— Yes, fir"
Page 24: "From a hill" (removed line break after From)
Page 25: "Weaver" for "Wearer"
Page 27: "Fultility." for "Futility"
Page 31: "Dublin." for "Dublin ."
Page 34: "many sins." for "many sins/"
Page 35: "morning" for "morningr", "Thank you." for "Thank you"
Page 59" "flesh" for "ftesh" and "the" for "ihe"
Page 215: "muttoning" for "muttonmg"
Other miscellaneous changes from the Modernist Versions Project transcription
Preface and index material:
Removed; may be made available on other pages of this site.
SMP:
Although not present in this printing, later editions of the novel begin each of the novel's three main sections (Stephen's, Bloom's, and Molly's episode[s]) by enlarging the first letter of the text for that section. There are varying interpretations for how this highlights the main characters' names: S (Stephen), M (Molly Bloom), and P (Poldy, Molly's nickname for Leopold Bloom).
Page numbering:
In the print edition, pages are numbered through in the top left-hand corner; I've removed these from the page text and use them as the title for that page's text instead (i.e. you can check a page's title on the website to see where you would find it in a copy of the 1922 first printing). Where page numbers were missing from the transcription (e.g. 15) I used the digital images to determine the text cutoffs for that page. Some pages were blank (e.g. pages 51 and 52 were blank and blank except for a roman numeral II, respectively); I haven't included these on my site but wanted to keep the page numbering matching the print book, so you'll notice that on my site page 50 is followed by page 53.
Because font and layout choices don't exactly match the dimensions of the print page, some pages may appear to end in the middle of a sentence (i.e. somewhere in the middle of the last line, rather than on the last line at the far right corner). Rest assured that the next page picks up from exactly where you left off—you're not missing words.
Variously throughout (beginning on print page 17):
On some of the print pages, extra numbering appears in the bottom right-hand corner (as opposed to the top left-hand and right-hand, where normal page numbering appears). I have removed these throughout.
Page 31:
"Good man" for "Goood man".
Page 31:
"board" for "bo ard"
Later alterations to the site's text
Because of how annotation works on this site, we may not be able to subsequently revise the text of the novel without damaging how annotations on that page are attached to sections of the text (although for small changes, I may be able to manually re-anchor annotations depending on how thickly annotated a page is). I'll list any such issues caught but not yet altered on this site here as well. Note that typographical changes that do not interfere with character count can be made easily without disrupting the annotations.
- (None as of yet)
As the transcription I'm working with doesn't use any notation to demarcate important typographical changes such as italics and all-caps, I'll be making these on each page as I pass through the book from beginning to end (please let me know if you wish to jump ahead to a later section, and I can prioritize fixing its typography). To add correct typography, I'll be using the Modernist Versions Project's digital images of the pages of 1922 first printing (same as used in the transcription that provides out text), followed by diffing the non-validated Project Gutenberg HTML text with this site to catch anything I might have missed. (Just using the Project Gutenberg HTML isn't a good alternative, as it isn't clear how rigorously it was transcribed and checked, nor from what printing(s) the text was transcribed.)
* Joyce, James. Ulysses: A Critical and Synoptic Edition. Eds. Hans Walter Gabler, Wolfhard Steppe, and Claus Melchior. Garland Press, 1984. p. 1891.