Written over a seven-year period from 1914 to 1921, Ulysses was serialised in the American journal The Little Review from 1918 to 1920,[220] when the publication of the Nausicaä episode led to a prosecution for obscenity under the Comstock Act of 1873, which made it illegal to circulate materials deemed obscene in the U.S. mail.[221] In 1919, sections of the novel also appeared in the London literary journal The Egoist, but the novel itself was banned in the United Kingdom until 1936.[222] Joyce had resolved that the book would be published on his 40th birthday, 2 February 1922, and Sylvia Beach, Joyce's publisher in Paris, received the first three copies from the printer that morning.[223][205]
The 1920 prosecution in the US was brought after The Little Review serialised a passage of the book depicting characters masturbating. Three earlier chapters had been banned by the US Post Office, but it was Secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice John S. Sumner who instigated this legal action.[224] The Post Office did partially suppress the "Nausicaä" edition of The Little Review.[225] Legal historian Edward de Grazia has argued that few readers would have been fully aware of the masturbation in the text, given the metaphoric language.[226] Irene Gammel extends this argument to suggest that the obscenity allegations brought against The Little Review were influenced by the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven's more explicit poetry, which had appeared alongside the serialization of Ulysses.[227] At the trial in 1921 the magazine was declared obscene and, as a result, Ulysses was effectively banned in the United States. Throughout the 1920s, the United States Post Office Department burned copies of the novel.[228]
In 1932, Random House and lawyer Morris Ernst arranged to import the French edition and have a copy seized by Customs. Random House contested the seizure, and in United States v. One Book Called Ulysses, U.S. District Judge John M. Woolsey ruled that the book was not pornographic and therefore could not be obscene,[229] a decision Stuart Gilbert called "epoch-making".[230] The Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the ruling in 1934.[231] The U.S. thus became the first English-speaking country where the book was freely available. Although Ireland's Censorship of Publications Board never banned Ulysses, a customs loophole prevented it from being allowed into Ireland.[232][205][233] It was first openly available in Ireland in the 1960s.[234]
