Later full morocco designer binding by Sally Lou Smith (with her initials gilt stamped to inside of lower cover and to the foot of the spine of the drop back box). Covers and spine with black, brown, grey, ochre and yellow onlays on black morocco to an abstract design of 'Dublin at night', inner covers with an abstract line design with yellow and grey endpapers, a.e.g., preserved in a felt-lined morocco backed drop back box, with title in gilt to spine. Externally very good indeed, internally the text is very slightly browned, but is otherwise clean. Presentation copy, from Joyce to H.G. Wells, inscribed on a free endpaper, "To H.G. Wells respectfully James Joyce 5 November 1928 Paris". Wells had reviewed 'A Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man' in 1917, but this meeting in Paris was the first time they had met. Later that month, on the 23rd, Wells wrote to Joyce that "I have enormous respect for your genius dating from your earliest books and I feel now a great personal liking for you but you and I are set upon absolutely different courses ... Now with regard to this literary experiment of yours. It's a considerable thing because you are a very considerable man and you have in your crowded composition a mighty genius for expression which has escaped discipline. But I don't thnk it gets anywhere. You have turned your back on common men - on their elementary needs and their restricted time and intelligence, and you have elaborated. What is the result? Vast riddles. Your last two works have been more amusing and exciting to write than they ever will be to read ... Who the hell is this Joyce who demands so many waking hours of the few thousand I have still to live for a proper appreciation of his quirks and fancies and flashes of rendering? All of this is from my point of view. Perhaps you are right and I am all wrong. Your work is an extraordinary experiment and I would go out of my way to save it from destructive or restrictive interruption. It has its believers and its following. Let them rejoice in it. To me it is a dead end. My warmest wishes to you Joyce. I can't follow your banner any more than you can follow mine. But the world is wide and there is room for both of us to be wrong. Yours, H.G. Wells" (Quoted in 'The Paris Review' blog, 21/09/2016). The binding was completed by Sally Lou Smith (1925-2007), in 1981. A wonderful association copy, linking two of the great twentieth century writers, in an attractive designer binding