As James Joyce was working on Finnegans Wake , he asked his friend T.S. Eliot to shepherd an early extract, simply known as 'Work in Progress' into print. This celebrated episode, Anna Livia Plurabelle , was the first part of Joyce's extraordinary text to be published in England, printed in pamphlet form in 1930. It became the best-known section of Finnegans Wake , and one of Joyce's favourites; revised and published independently more times than any other piece. This new edition in the Faber Modern Classics series includes a new foreword by Edna O'Brien. 'His writing is not about something; it is that something itself.' Samuel Beckett