Chamber Music and Pomes Penyeach were first published during James Joyce’s lifetime. Six poems from Chamber Music (composed 1901–4) appeared individually in books or periodicals before the complete collection was published by Elkin Mathews in 1907. The composition of Pomes Penyeach dates from 1903–24, and the collection appeared in 1927 (Shakespeare and Company), before a corrected version was produced by Faber in 1933. Of the uncollected poems included in this volume, ‘The Holy Office’ (1904–5), ‘Gas from a Burner’ (1912) and ‘Ecce Puer’ (1932) were circulated during Joyce’s lifetime. The rest of the poems in this volume first appeared in print within twenty-five years of his death in 1941, the majority in biographies or manuscript catalogues.
Spelling has been updated and standardized across the poems in this edition. Joyce’s alterations of the text for the second and third editions of Chamber Music (published in 1918 and 1923 respectively) included the removal of hyphens for words such as “song-confessed”. This volume follows the more standardized punctuation of the earlier version.