Ulysses by Numbers

Numbers in literature often have magical or secret meanings, but this remarkable book also shows us other, quite startling modes of literary counting, giving us the pleasure we find only in the best critical readings: we are surprised and we wonder what to do with our surprise. -- Michael Wood, author of <i>Literature and the Taste of Knowledge</i> Ulysses by Numbers is an intricate, dazzling account of how numbers mattered to Joyce. Written with engaging lucidity and wit, this highly original study explores the numerical unconsciousness of Ulysses through close analyses of style, characters, wordcounts, readerships and compositional history. Bulson's study is a permanent contribution to Joyce studies and essential reading both for Joyceans and modernists more broadly. -- Katherine Mullin, University of Leeds Ulysses by Numbers is a winningly idiosyncratic piece of literary criticism, one that is both very much of its moment in many respects, and in a few others defiantly peculiar. Bulson has delivered a timely, restlessly inventive book that challenges the increasingly hostile polarization within literary studies about the use of quantitative evidence. It is a provocative call for, and demonstration of, a delirious, even enchanted kind of quantitative reading. -- Nicholas Dames, author of <i>The Physiology of the Novel: Reading, Neural Science, and the Form of Victorian Fiction</i>