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Ulysses was first published in Paris in 1922 with the support of Sylvia Beach's Shakespeare & Co. book store. The edition was limited to 100 copies but during the correction of proofs Joyce enlarged the book by over a third, driving the printer crazy. The first edition printed in England appeared eight months after the Paris edition, utilizing the French plates, and was limited to 2000 copies.
Source:
Copy of the first London edition of Ulysses, 1922 (Lilly Library, Indiana University).
The Novel of the Century: James Joyce's Ulysses on the Anniversary of Bloomsday (web site of Lilly Library, Indiana University).
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Bloomsday for Cab Drivers / 8
Ulysses
Ulysses was first published in 1922 (and promptly banned in the U.S. until 1933).
The novel is set in Dublin during a single day in 1904 -- June 16, if you haven't already guessed -- and it records the stream-of-consciousness ruminations of Leopold and various other characters as they ponder their own lives and react to the sights, sounds and smells of the city around them and to the people they meet along the way.
As you might expect, the narrative is packed with the jumbled impressions of daily existence in 1904 Dublin. But not content with this, Joyce also stirred in goodly helpings of Roman Catholic theology, European history, Irish legend, classical mythology and other topics, and then laced the text with multilingual puns and words from Gypsy slang, Hebrew, Latin and Gaelic.
So it is no surprise that the book has spawned an entire scholarly industry devoted to its study and interpretation (not to say decipherment).