The letter was written nine years before the book was published
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A letter in which author James Joyce pleaded with a publisher to buy his first major book Dubliners has sold for £32,265 at Christie's in London.
Joyce wrote the letter to Heinemann publishers in 1905 when he was 23 - but his work was turned down and he battled for a decade to have it published.
It was eventually printed in 1914 but Joyce had left Ireland by then as a result of the numerous rejections.
The letter says: "The book is not a collection of tourist impressions".
An edition of the book was due to be published in 1910 - but was burnt by the printers, who felt it was offensive.
Joyce said he wanted Dubliners to be a chapter of Ireland's moral history including stories based on childhood, adolescence, maturity and public life.
Joyce went on to live in Switzerland and France
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By the time the book came out, Joyce and his family were living in Zurich.
The letter was part of the Quentin Keynes collection of books and manuscripts, which fetched a total of £3,357,532.
It was one of 50 items relating to Joyce, with the collection selling for a total of £267,851.
A rare copy of Joyce's satirical poem Holy Office made £28,680 and one of only 25 copies of an Obelisk Press edition of poetry collection Pomes Penyeach
sold for £26,290.
Other items sold over the three-day auction included a letter written by David Livingstone and left in a bottle at the mouth of the Zambesi river, which fetched £17,925.
Collector Quentin Keynes, who died last year, was an explorer, wildlife photographer and film-maker.