An exhibition of typos

Smithsonian Magazine -  James Joyce wrote the manuscript of Ulysses with a steel pen over seven years. By his typists’ accounts, the Irish author’s penmanship was atrocious, and his revisions were overwhelming. When the book was published in 1922, it was full of mistakes. In a letter to his wife, he wrote, “The edition you have is full of printer’s errors.”

 

The following year, Joyce’s editors compiled a massive list of the book’s errors to be fixed in new editions. Joyce rejected some of the corrections, saying, “These are not misprints but beauties of my style hitherto undreamt of.” Even so, some future printings of the book came with a seven-page errata sheet listing more than 200 mistakes.

Errors like those in Ulysses are the subject of a new exhibition at Yale. “‘Beauties of My Style’: Errata and the Printed Mistake,” which opens at the university’s Sterling Memorial Library on March 30, examines the history of typos across five centuries...

According to a statement from the library, “errors committed” lists first appeared in the 15th century. Authors slipped these lists—containing typos, additions and apologies—into the backs of books after publication. The exhibition examines errata lists alongside their companion texts, examining themes of “censorship, misrepresentation, intervention and instability,” per the statement.