Philatelic Ulysses

Abstract

February 1922 was to be a momentous month for Ireland’s philatelic and literary history.1 On February 1, the day before the publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses, a press notice appeared from J. J. Walsh, the new Postmaster General of the Irish Free State and former 1916 fighter, calling for designs “of a symbolic character” for the Free State’s first postage stamps.2 On the 11th, a Dublin correspondent reported that armed guards were watching over the stamps that would serve in the interim, British stamps featuring King George V overprinted with the inscription Rialtas Sealadac na hÉireann 1922 (Provisional Government of Ireland 1922) (Cooke 38). That same day, James Joyce wrote to Sylvia Beach about his concerns that Ireland’s postal transition would impact mailing copies and notices of Ulysses: “I think all Irish notices ought to be sent out as with a new Irish postmaster general and a vigilance committee in clerical hands you never know from one day to the next what may occur.”3 On the 17th, following their escort by armed guards to the GPO, the first overprinted Free State stamps “denoting drastic political changes” and “of great interest to philatelists” were issued to the public and to collectors worldwide (see Figure 1).4 As a columnist for the Irish Times would later ask rhetorically,