Sifted Science: James Joyce's Reference to George Albert Wentworth and George Anthony Hill's A Text-Book of Physics

Much attention has been paid to the presence of science in Ulysses and, in particular, the scientific style of "Ithaca," but relatively little focus has been given to the main source of Joyce's scientific knowledge in his novel. Critics have noted his use of Bertrand Russell's Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, Isaac Todhunter's Algebra, Ignace Gaston Pardies's Short But Yet Plain Elements of Geometry, and Henry Sinclair Hall and Frederick Haller Stevens's Euclid's Elements for mathematical details, but his exact sources of scientific information have not been explored in a similar fashion.¹ Nevertheless, Joyce's general references to scientific textbooks have been widely acknowledged with many critics observing from his notesheets and rough notes that he had consulted quite a variety of scientific and mathematical works. Phillip Herring, for example, comments in his introduction to Joyce's "Ulysses" Notesheets in the British Museum that, during the composition of "Ithaca," Joyce "had to go back and study basic handbooks so he could recreate [scientific] theory and terminology with some measure of verisimilitude."²

I present here George Albert Wentworth and George Anthony Hill's A Text-Book of Physics as a primary source of Joyce's scientific knowledge.³ His usage of the Text-Book has not been discovered until now, but I will document the many compelling parallels between its contents, Joyce's "Ulysses" Notesheets in the British Museum, and the published text of Ulysses at the end of this essay. Wentworth and Hill's Text-Book was a popular and commonly read science textbook, even used by T. S. Eliot during his high-school studies.⁴ Wentworth was chair of mathematics at Philips Exeter Academy, and Hill was Assistant Professor of Physics at Harvard; both were dedicated to math and science education, authoring many textbooks during their careers.⁵

Wentworth and Hill's A Text-Book of Physics was likely one of many scientific textbooks and handbooks referenced, and Joyce's notes from the Text-Book were made on the "Ithaca" notesheets (numbered 6, 7, and 8), with the words and phrases from the same chapter of the textbook generally clustered in the section of the notesheets (Notesheets 437-52). The order of notes does not follow the textbook exactly, and a possible reason is suggested by Herring in his discussion of Joyce's use of Russell's Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy. In the introduction to Joyce's Notes and Early Drafts for "Ulysses," Herring observes that Joyce's notes from Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy were "[m]ixed with diverse material for 'Ithaca'" and "appear in patches … at times in nonsequential order, indicating that Joyce probably transferred them to the notebook from individual note cards or scraps of paper" (Drafts 49). The notes from A Text-Book of Physics appear in the same manner and indicate that Joyce worked through various textbooks and handbooks in a similar way.

A comparison of Joyce's notesheets with the Text-Book further suggests that Joyce went through the textbook methodically, starting from page 1 and making notes from all chapters of the book. These notes suggest that his primary purpose in examining the textbook was to obtain a breadth of scientific vocabulary and phrases, encompassing a comprehensive range of scientific topics. His use of the textbook follows in the compositional style of much of Ulysses, reflecting his famous comment in 1921: "I have not read a work of literature for several years. My head is full of pebbles and rubbish and broken matches and lots of glass picked up 'most everywhere'" (LettersI 167). Wentworth and Hill's Text-Book thus provides us with many of the fragments of glass and pebbles that eventually washed up in "Ithaca." It is worth noting also that most of the words and phrases from A Text-Book were crossed out in Joyce's notesheets with a red crayon, and the majority of additions related to this source were added after the Rosenbach manuscript. Richard Madtes has written in great detail about Joyce's...