| Ulysses James Joyce Complete Recording | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Studio album by RTÉ Players | |
| Recorded | 1982 |
| Genre | Drama |
| Length | 29:44:55 |
| Label | RTÉ with the Lannan Foundation |
The Ulysses broadcast occurred on Bloomsday 1982 when the Irish state broadcaster, RTÉ Radio, transmitted an uninterrupted 30-hour dramatised radio performance, by 33 actors of the RTÉ Players, of the entire text of James Joyce's epic 1922 novel, Ulysses, to commemorate the centenary of the author's birth (born 2 February 1882).[1] The broadcast was carried by live relay internationally[2] and won a Jacob's Broadcasting Award in recognition of its achievement.
The full 30-hour broadcast was repeated for the first time in 38 years on RTÉ Radio 1 Extra on 16 June 2020, beginning at 8 am. The decision to repeat the broadcast was influenced by the death of Joyce's grandson and literary estate executor, Stephen Joyce, in January 2020 and by the quarantine introduced in Ireland to limit the spread of the COVID-19 virus.[3]
The novel Ulysses contains about 265,000 words from a vocabulary of 30,030 words.[4] This record-breaking and historic[1][5] live literary broadcast was originally released to the public, after the broadcast, as a recording on 20 audio cassettes in 1982[6] and later digitally remastered on CD in two formats: as a 32-CD boxed set, and as a three-CD set of MP3 audio files, released in 2004 (OCLC 315482641 and 605276262).[7]