A CARD bearing new year’s greetings from James Joyce, written 70 years ago today, is being offered for sale at €4,950.
The illustrated postcard was sent by Joyce from Zurich to a friend in France on New Year’s Eve 1940.
Joyce died in the Swiss city exactly two weeks later. The card is one of the last documents written by Joyce and is being sold by rare books dealer Kenny’s of Galway.
Bookseller Tomás Kenny said the postcard was in “remarkably good condition” and that “anything with Joyce’s handwriting is rare, especially something written so close to his death”. He said the card had been acquired from a private collector in Ireland who had bought it in the United States.
It is stamped and postmarked Zurich and the two “Helvetia” stamps are franked with a postmark depicting a skier and a promotional message for winter sports. It is addressed to Laurence Vail, at “Les 6 Enfants”, Megève, Haute-Savoie département of southeast France, close to the Swiss border.
Joyce wrote in French with a green pen and wished Vail and his family les meilleurs voeux (best wishes) for 1941.
Vail was a painter and sculptor and was friendly with Joyce. He married Peggy Guggenheim, the famous art collector, in 1922 but they divorced a decade later. He remarried the American writer Kay Boyle but that marriage also ended in divorce.
Vail died in Paris in 1968.
