James Joyce’s Ulysses, which turns 100 this February, is now central to the literary canon and features on university literature courses around the world. However, it was not always as revered as it is now. In fact, it was banned as obscene before it was first published as a complete novel, regarded as a work of perversion.
Ulysses was initially published in instalments in the US literary magazine The Little Review. The chapter that became known as “Nausicaa” features the novel’s main character, Leopold Bloom, masturbating on a beach while gazing at a 17-year-old girl called Gerty McDowell.
