Ten 'epiclets' written after Ulysses in 1923, have been published together for the first time, causing a rift among scholars as to how they fit in to the Joyce canon

A small Irish press is publishing what it is calling "almost certainly the last undiscovered title by James Joyce" – 10 short pieces by the author, written six months after he completed Ulysses – igniting a row over the author's intentions.

Penned by Joyce in 1923, and described by the author as "epiclets", the pieces range from vignettes or sketches to more substantial short stories or fables, said Ithys Press, which publishes the work as Finn's Hotel this weekend – just in time for Bloomsday, the annual global celebration on 16 June of Joyce's masterpiece, Ulysses.

The majority of the stories were discovered decades ago, and included in A First-Draft Version of Finnegans Wake, edited by David Hayman, in 1963.

But scholar Danis Rose, who has edited and arranged Finn's Hotel for Ithys, believes this is a "misunderstanding", and argues that the work is distinct in itself – if abandoned by Joyce – and not just a draft of Finnegans Wake, which was published in 1939.

"The vignettes were not drafts of Finnegans Wake, as when they were written Finnegans Wake had not even been conceptualised. It is rather the other way round: Finnegans Wake is a vast expansion on the ur-stories that are Finn's Hotel. In a sense, Finn's Hotel is to Finnegans Wake as one of the Dubliners stories are to Ulysses. They are not the same, but thematically intertextualised," he said.

Anastasia Herbert at Ithys agreed. "It is extremely unlikely that in 1923 Joyce knew what he would do in 1938; and it is implausible to suggest otherwise. Therefore these pieces cannot reasonably be conceived of as drafts of Finnegans Wake," she said. "It is now well known (among Joyce textual scholars) that apart from one short piece, Joyce abandoned all the rest until 1938 when he, struggling to finish Finnegans Wake, returned to some of the abandoned pieces, cannibalised parts of some of them and incorporated rewritten versions of them at the very last minute to those parts of Finnegans Wake that had not yet been set in proof."

Rose initially intended to publish the book in 1992, through Penguin, but the deal fell through. "Basically, all hell broke loose … The Joyce scholars, with notable exceptions, were characteristically aghast, like a consternation of moles caught in a bright light. The Joyce estate, though it had already given me permission to publish the edition, was riled and publishers were spooked," he writes in a preface to the new edition.

The expiration of copyright in Joyce's works at the end of 2011, 70 years after the author's death, means publication can now go ahead. Rose said there was an "important advantage" to the long wait, because three new pieces were subsequently unexpectedly discovered in Paris in 2004 and are now in the National Library of Ireland.

"The vignettes, set down with their full text in their actual originating context and interrelationship, have never before been published. In this sense a new Joyce text has indeed been discovered," Rose said.

An illustration by Casey Sorrow from Finn's Hotel, a new collection of James Joyce stories published by Ithys Press

Ithys acknowledges that "the position of Finn's Hotel still divides the small and congenitally contentious world of Joycean textual criticism", and news of the publication of the Joyce pieces has indeed caused consternation among Joyce scholars.

"It's not 'undiscovered' (even ignoring the obvious fallacy of this claim) … Rose thought he had 'discovered' that they were to be a separate set of short stories, based on some correspondence between Joyce and Harriet Shaw Weaver … but that notion is not generally credited," said Dr John Nash of Durham University. "They are certainly interesting transitional pieces but not a 'short story cycle' like Dubliners. As for being the 'last' new discovery from Joyce, I suspect there are more drafts, letters and so forth that will come to public light in due course."

Professor Derek Attridge at the University of York was more concerned by what he described as "foisting a 'newly discovered' work by Joyce on an unsuspecting public".

"Rose's theory, which has not, to my knowledge, been accepted by any other Joyce scholar, is that these pieces were intended as a collection of stories entitled Finn's Hotel. Unless Rose has now come up with some substantial new evidence that this 'work' is not an editor's fantasy, publication can only distort and damage Joyce's reputation," he said.

Herbert, however, said there were "many reasons to think that James Joyce himself would have been pleased with our publication". "It was customary for Joyce to publish fragments of texts of work in progress," she said, "and he particularly relished publishing in fine press editions. The Ithys Press edition of Finn's Hotel continues that tradition," she said. The first edition of the text is being published in a limited edition of 180 copies, in three issues.

"This is a portrait of Joyce in the year after Ulysses, just as he was setting out on a new work that would further push the envelope of English literature," said Herbert. "The prose pieces of Finn's Hotel – a place where people come and go – are written in a unique diversity of styles, much more so than Ulysses. Taken together, they are the precursor to the multimodulated voices of the Wake – but these first utterings from the characters who populate Finn's Hotel are far easier to understand. Readers will find that Finn's Hotel is a fascinating read in itself and simultaneously an ideal introduction to Joyce's last and most difficult work."

The news of the "new" Joyce publication comes as fans of the Ulysses author from around the world prepare to celebrate his legacy on 16 June, the day chosen by Joyce for Leopold Bloom, hero of Ulysses, to wander the streets of Dublin, and readers will be marking the day by tracing Bloom's steps through the city.

The first ever "global Bloomsday gathering" is also taking place on Sunday, when the James Joyce Centre in Dublin will produce an online global reading of Ulysses, with readers in 25 cities across four continents taking on different sections of the epic novel.

The edition of Ulysses used for the reading is a new one, with a new introduction by Bob Joyce, grand-nephew of the author. "Without doubt Ulysses is a difficult read. I would urge readers to have a go," writes Bob Joyce. "Dip in and out of the book or start with some of the easier episodes. 'Ah you will, say yes, you will yes, Yes.'"