Édouard Dujardin

The writer Édouard Dujardin (1861–1949), who attended Monnier's Ulysses banquet and signed this copy of the keepsake menu, was credited in France in the late nineteenth century as the innovator of the stream-of-consciousness technique in narrative. Joyce had become familiar with Dujardin's work during his brief stint in Paris in 1902. More than twenty years later, when A Portrait of the Artist as Young Man was published in France, Dujardin became aware of certain similarities in their work—a connection that had also come to the attention of French critics regarding Joyce's version of stream of consciousness employed in Ulysses. Dujardin's career subsequently underwent a renaissance, which he credited to Joyce's fame in France. Joyce himself conceded his debt to Dujardin. In a copy of Ulysses inscribed to the French author, Joyce signed it "the impenitent thief."