An Emendation to the Joycean Canon: The Last Hurrah for "Politics and Cattle Disease"

Abstract

Most Joyceans will be surprised by the lack of evidence of Joyce's authorship that supported the admission into the Critical Writings of the Irish newspaper article Politics and Cattle Disease.1 This essay will demonstrate that Joyce did not write the unsigned 10 September 1912 Freeman's Journal newspaper edito rial Politics and Cattle Disease and that there never was substantial evidence for supposing he did. The most likely author of this edito rial was William Br ay den, who was the editor of the Freeman's Journal both in 1904, when he appeared in fiction as a character in Ulysses, and in 1912, when the editorial was published. An examination of the newspaper source material has revealed the correct sub-editorial on 6 September 1912 (though not by Joyce) that Ellmann was looking for when he chose Politics and Cattle Disease, after getting a clue, while examining the Cornell Joyce collection, from a 6 September 1912 letter written by Charles Joyce.2