JOYCE, James (1882-1941). A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. New York: B.W. Huebsch, 1916. 8vo. Original blue cloth, spine lettered in gilt (a touch of wear to spine ends and corners); half morocco folding case. Provenance: Oliver Brett, 3rd Viscount Esher (1881-1963), English book collector (armorial bookplate). FIRST EDITION OF JOYCE'S FIRST PUBLISHED NOVEL, which appeared in serial form in The Egoist from February 1914 to September 1915. Joyce began the work in 1904, and it went through a series of radical changes before publication in 1916. "The prose moves forward in complexity from the child's sensations at the beginning to the adolescent subtleties at the end," and the novel's modernism is apparent in its episodic format and concern with the consciousness of the protagonist (Connolly, The Modern Movement 26). Slocum and Cahoon A11.