"It is important to expect nothing, to take every experience, including the negative ones, as merely steps on the path, and to proceed." — Ram Dass

From: COVERBROWSER

Rejected...
"[...] Stephen King (on Carrie): We are not interested in science fiction which deals with negative utopias. They do not sell.
    Joseph Heller (on Catch–22): I haven’t really the foggiest idea about what the man is trying to say… Apparently the author intends it to be funny – possibly even satire – but it is really not funny on any intellectual level … From your long publishing experience you will know that it is less disastrous to turn down a work of genius than to turn down talented mediocrities.
     George Orwell (on Animal Farm): It is impossible to sell animal stories in the USA.
     Oscar Wilde (on Lady Windermere’s Fan): My dear sir, I have read your manuscript. Oh, my dear sir.
     Vladimir Nabokov (on Lolita): … overwhelmingly nauseating, even to an enlightened Freudian … the whole thing is an unsure cross between hideous reality and improbable fantasy. It often becomes a wild neurotic daydream … I recommend that it be buried under a stone for a thousand years.
     The Tale of Peter Rabbit was turned down so many times, Beatrix Potter initially self-published it.
     Lust for Life by Irving Stone was rejected 16 times, but found a publisher and went on to sell about 25 million copies.
     John Grisham’s first novel was rejected 25 times. [...]"
— The Girl & Her Books
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Palp Fiction

1st edition of TROPIC OF CANCER (1934)
From: Banned Novels

"The first thing that arises out of the nominations for this year's bad sex awards – the excruciating writing highlighted by the Literary Review each year – is just how fecund their writers' imaginations are. If they have done half the things they have ascribed to their characters, their spectacles must have steamed up.
     There are agile tongues, rooms that begin to shake, warm wet caves, volcanic releases, moist meat, bottomless swamps of dead fish and yellow lilies in bloom and cellars filled with a heady store of wines and spirits emitting wafts of gaseous bouquets. And that is before you get to massaging, kneading, stretching, rubbing, pinching, flicking, feathering, licking, kissing and gently biting – which occurs in just one sentence thanks to David Guterson.
     Now in their 19th year, the awards have shortlisted 12 authors before the presentation next month, among them some of the most distinguished – or at least bestselling – authors in the world. They come from Britain, the US, Hungary, Japan and Australia." — Stephen Bates, Guardian
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Gestation

From: Wikimedia Commons

"SHAKESPEARE & Company, the famously ramshackle Anglo-American bookshop on the Parisian Left Bank, is more than just a place to pick up a paperback. It is a bohemian hub once frequented by Henry Miller, Allen Ginsberg and Anaïs Nin, the Paris equivalent of San Francisco's City Lights bookstore. Besides rare editions, second-hand books and the latest literary phenomena, the store holds regular workshops for aspiring writers.
One such group is 'The Other Writers' Group,' which gathers every Saturday in the bookshop's library. To reach this room, you must walk to the back of the shop, past a coin-filled wishing well, turn right at the old piano and clamber up the creaky wooden staircase to the first floor, where bookshelves threaten to topple at every turn. At the top of the staircase, someone has created a tiny writer's den, a closet-sized cubby-hole that is open to anyone who cares to write in it." — Sarah Dallas, More Intelligent Life
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From: Genetic Joyce Studies

"[...] while visiting her bookshop [Shakespeare and Company], [James] Joyce reported the bad news to Sylvia Beach: the two American publishers were finally compelled to decline. On that same day, Beach offered to publish Ulysses under her Shakespeare and Company imprint. By mid-April, Beach, with Adrienne Monnier's help, secured a printer for the job and proposed to Darantiere an edition of one thousand copies. Joyce wrote to Weaver about his change of fortunes on 10 April and they undertook plans almost immediately for an Egoist Press, English edition also to be produced after the French edition sold out. Beach and Joyce planned to publish the book in October 1921 and decided to offer the book to subscribers, hoping to acquire enough advance funds to cover the printing of the edition. As part of the advertising initiative, Joyce and Beach included on the form a number of brief review statements by well-known literati.

[...] Beach moved Shakespeare and Company to a larger, new address at rue de l'Odeon in September 1921. Meanwhile, Joyce continued to compose and correct Ulysses. The author's numerous and substantial late-stage emendations to his text delayed the printing and publication of the book. Joyce continued to correct proofs and delivered the last of them to Dijon only on 30 January 1922. Finally, on 2 February 1922, Darantiere delivered two copies (#901 and #902) of Ulysses to Beach, who in turn brought them to Joyce on this, his fortieth birthday.

[...]  When George Slocombe reported in his Paris-society column, '...and here it is at last, as large as a telephone directory or a family Bible, and with many of the literary and social characteristics of each!' he aptly described the first Ulysses. The first edition was unwieldy and fragile but purchasers of this book were expected to have it individually rebound in cloth or leather to match other items in their library." — Stacey Herbert, Genetic Joyce Studies Issue 4 (Spring 2004)
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Go to Skakespeare and Company's website here...
And buy Ulysses here...