Before his play Exiles was published or performed, Joyce had sold the manuscript to the American modern art collector and lawyer John Quinn (1870–1924), shown here standing with Joyce and the authors Ezra Pound and Ford Madox Ford. As scholars have noted, the sale marked a new source of income for Joyce, who struggled to support his family, and signaled his growing status as an author. Quinn’s investment in Joyce persisted far beyond Exiles: he acted as the attorney for Anderson and Heap in the obscenity case against Ulysses in the Little Review and promoted Joyce to American publishers. Among several other works, Quinn purchased a “fair copy” manuscript of Ulysses as it was being written, enabling Joyce to finish the novel.
Unknown photographer
Ezra Pound, John Quinn, Ford Madox Ford, and James Joyce, Paris, ca. 1923
Courtesy of the Poetry Collection of the University Libraries, University at Buffalo, the State University of New York