Richard Ellmann shows uncertainty about the section-division and corresponding pagination of Finnegans Wake when he writes in James Joyce ([1959] 1965 Edn.): ‘His [Joyce’s] next obstacle would be Shaun the Post (Chapter VI, pp.126-68)’, where the chapter named is actually “Questions and Answers” in Book I [1.vi]. The ensuing commentary, in which he quotes Joyce’s letter to Miss Weaver explaining that “Shaun the Post” would be a ‘description of a postman travelling backwards in the night through the events already narrated [..] written in the form of a via crucis of 14 stations but in reality [..] only a barrel rolling down the river Liffey. (24 May 1924; Ellmann, op. cit., p.575.) This clearly indicates that he has in mind the substance of Book III - viz., “Shaun”, “Jaun”, “Yawn” and the “Fourth Watch” rather than I.vi, as indicated by his references.

 In the Chronology of composition and publication supplied in the Notes (p.803), he cites the chapters of “Shaun the Post” (III.i, ii, iii, iv) as going forward from March 1924, giving the pagination correctly as 403-590. In the record for 1928, however, he lists the fragment published in transition, No. 12 (March 1928, pp.7-27) as FW III.i (pp.196-216) - erroneously citing the pagination for the ALP section (1.viii) which was published as a pamphlet in New York in the same year and is so listed in his own chronology (idem.). The latter confusion is probably due to typographical error; the former cannot be, and suggests that he has confused the role of Shaun in “Question and Answers” with his part in “Shaun the Post” (otherwise known as “The Four Watches of Shaun”). On that showing, his familiarity with the text of Finnegans Wake is perhaps less than his familiarity with the letters that Joyce wrote about it.

 In comparison, Adaline Glasheen - dealing with FW 1.vii [“Questions & anwers”] - quotes Joyce’s remarks in a letter to HSW concerning ‘[a] picture of Shaun in his “know-all profoundly impressive role for an ‘ever-devoted friend’ [...] unrequestedly consented to pose”.’ (Third Census of Finnegans Wake, 1977, p.xli; Letters, I, pp.257-58). She goes on: ‘The “friend” was Wyndham Lewis [ref. Ellmann, 1959, p.607] who [...] in 1927 published “Analysis of the Mind of James Joyce” (unfriendly) which was later published in Time and Western Man. Number 11 is Joyce’s retaliation for “An Analysis”’ She continues: ‘Revising, adding to “Work in Progess”, Joyce pretty well turned Shaun into Wyndham [sic] Lewis, and there could scarcely be a more vicious portrait of the authoritarian mind - supple, rabid, and polemic’ (Glasheen, idem.).

 This leaves unresolved the question whether the episode was first written as a portrait of Lewis or not. If the date of the Blast article is correctly given, then the original must have been revised to resemble Lewis after 1924. That Joyce revised “The Mookse and the Gripes” (in 2.vii) with Lewis in mind at the same time as he revised “The Ondt and the Gracehoper” (in 3.i) is clear from the chronological chart details for 1928-29 in Ellmann (James Joyce, 1965, p.803). It seems likely that the basic characterisation was already established by 1924. It is also probable that Glasheen has mistaken the the date of “An Analysis”, given here 1927 (op. cit.,. xli.). Did Lewis reprint his article from Blast within the year - and if so, why is Time and Western Man always treated as its original locus as in Ellmann’s narrative which specifies that it appeared in September of that year)?

St. Gerand-le-Puy: In her account of the Joyce’s second sojourn in this town in James Joyce’s World (1957), Patricia Hutchins refers to Lucie as the dg. of Paul Leon, and to the woman who dies on returning from hospital to her own flat as Mme E-, who is so-remembered by the proprietoress (p.205). In Ellmann’s narrative (James Joyce, 1959; 1965 Edn.), Mme. Elliott is a parent of one of the children at Maria Jolas’s school whom Nora enlists as a dining companion to lift Joyce out of his unsociable mood (p.743), whereas the woman who dies in her room on 10 June 1940, while Joyce is actually keeping vigil to relieve Maria Jolas, is identified only circumstantially as ‘a women who was in hospital’ and whose flat they occupy as long as she remained there, moving to the Hotel du Commerce on her return from hospital and into her flat again at her death.

Egoist serialisation: Richard Ellmann (James Joyce, 1965 Edn.) reports simply that Miss Weaver found one printer who ‘was prevailed upon to do a few episodes (II, III, VI and X) only’, adding directly: ‘She informed JOyce through Pinker in March 1918, that she wished to publish Ulysses in book form, and Joyce replied on March 20 that he would be pleased [...]’ (JJ, p.457). He is followed closely in this formula by Bruce Arnold (The Scandal of Ulysses, 1988), who writes: ‘Between 1918 [and] December 1920, Harriet Shaw Weaver made further attempts to achieve publication. By march she was telling Joyce she wanted to publish in book form, which pleased him [...]’ (p.5.)

Charting publications: Patricia Hutchins, writing in an earlier generation (James Joyce’s World, 1957), compares ‘extracts published in The Egoist with Ulysses in book form’ and supply some of the dates included in this chart but makes no reference to The Little Review serialisation of Ulysses, adding: ‘[...] a detailed study of the development of Joyce’s work will not be possible until all the extant manuscripts are available’ (p.239). The complete chronology became available in Walton Litz, The Art of James Joyce: Method and Design in Ulysses and Finnegans Wake (OUP 1964) but was later refined by Michael Groden in Ulysses in Progress (1979) - the outcome of a doctoral degree conducted under Litz and grounded in the MSS material in Buffalo. In a chronological chart inserted in the end-notes of James Joyce (1965 Edn.) very like that in Appendix C of Litz’s work detailing the composition and serialised publication of Finnegans Wake, but actually published before it, Ellmann acknowledges his debt to the Litz who presumably supplied a portion of his own research.