Sylvia Beach Tells the Story of Founding Shakespeare and Company, Publishing Joyce’s Ulysses, Selling Copies of Hemingway’s First Book & More (1962)

Revis­it­ing Ernest Hemingway’s A Move­able Feast a cou­ple of decades after I read it last, I notice a few things right away: I am still moved by the prose and think it’s as impres­sive as ever; I am less moved by the machis­mo and alco­holism and more inter­est­ed in char­ac­ters like Sylvia Beach, founder of Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny, the book­store that served as a base of oper­a­tions for the famed Lost Gen­er­a­tion of writ­ers in Paris.

“Sylvia had a live­ly, sharply sculp­tured face, brown eyes that were as alive as a small animal’s and as gay as a young girl’s,” Hem­ing­way wrote of her in his mem­oir. “She was kind, cheer­ful and inter­est­ed, and loved to make jokes and gos­sip. No one that I ever knew was nicer to me.” Indeed, Hem­ing­way also “recounts being giv­en access to the whole of Sylvia Beach’s library at Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny for free after his first vis­it,” notes writer RJ Smith.

Beach found­ed the shop in 1919, encour­aged (and fund­ed) by her part­ner Adri­enne Mon­nier, who owned a French-lan­guage book­store. Beach’s most­ly Eng­lish-lan­guage Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny would become a lend­ing-library, post office, bank, and even hotel for authors who con­gre­gat­ed there. She sup­port­ed the great expa­tri­ate mod­ernists and host­ed French writ­ers like André Gide and Paul Valéry. She also pub­lished James Joyce’s Ulysses in 1922 when no one else would, after ear­li­er pub­lished excerpts were deemed “obscene.”

Joyce was shaped by Paris, and owed a huge debt of grat­i­tude to Beach, just as read­ers of Ulysses do almost 100 years lat­er. Forty years after the novel’s pub­li­ca­tion, Beach trav­eled to Ire­land to cel­e­brate and sat down for the long inter­view above in which she remem­bers those heady times. She also tells the sto­ry of how a Pres­by­ter­ian minister’s daughter—who went to church in Prince­ton, NJ with Grover Cleve­land and Woodrow Wilson—became a pio­neer­ing out les­bian mod­ernist book­seller in Paris.

Beach remem­bers meet­ing “all the French writ­ers” at Monnier’s shop after her time study­ing at the Sor­bonne and how Amer­i­can writ­ers all came to Paris to escape pro­hi­bi­tion at home. “For Hem­ing­way and his most of his friends,” says Har­vard his­to­ri­an Patrice Higonnet, “Paris was one long binge, all the more enjoy­able because it wasn’t very expen­sive.” For Beach, Paris became home, and Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny a home away from home for waves of expats until the Nazis shut it down in 1941. (Ten years lat­er, a dif­fer­ent Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny was opened by book­seller George Whit­man.)

“They were dis­gust­ed in Amer­i­ca because they couldn’t get a drink,” Beach says, “and they couldn’t get Ulysses. I used to think those were the two great caus­es of their dis­con­tent.” Her inter­views, let­ters, and her own mem­oir, Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny, tell the sto­ry of the Lost Gen­er­a­tion from her point of view, one ani­mat­ed by an absolute devo­tion to lit­er­a­ture, and in par­tic­u­lar, to Joyce, who did not rec­i­p­ro­cate. When Ulysses sold to Ran­dom House in 1932, he offered her no share of his very large advance.

Beach was for­giv­ing. “I under­stood from the first,” she said, “that work­ing with or for Mr. Joyce, the plea­sure was mine—an infi­nite plea­sure: the prof­its were for him.” She was doing some­thing oth­er than run­ning a busi­ness. She was “cross-fer­til­iz­ing,” as French writer Andre Cham­son put it. “She did more to link Eng­land, the Unit­ed States, Ire­land, and France than four great ambas­sadors com­bined.” She did so by giv­ing writ­ers what they need­ed to make the work she knew they could, at a very rare time and place in which such a thing was briefly pos­si­ble.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Begin­nings Pro­files Shake­speare and Company’s Sylvia Beach Whit­man

The Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny Project Dig­i­tizes the Records of the Famous Book­store, Show­ing the Read­ing Habits of the Lost Gen­er­a­tion

F. Scott Fitzger­ald Has a Strange Din­ner with James Joyce & Draws a Cute Sketch of It (1928)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness


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Comments (2)
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  • RISHABH CHADDHA says:

    Sylvia Whit­man walks a fine line between pre­serv­ing her father’s orig­i­nal idea and mak­ing sure Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny , Paris does­n’t get left behind.

    So hap­py to share this won­der­ful con­ver­sa­tion with Sylvia Whit­man
    who is the own­er of Shake­speare & Co. , Paris (the leg­endary Eng­lish Book­store across from Notre Dame)

    https://medium.com/@rishabh.chaddha1406/shakespeare-company-paris-an-interview-with-sylvia-whitman-483c3d601e99

    We major­ly dis­cussed :- (Do open my @medium page to read about the book­store)

    - Rich & organ­ic his­to­ry of the Book­shop. When & how the book­shop came into exis­tence.

    - Cura­tion Strat­e­gy of the Book­shop

    - How Paris evokes Poet­ry and what’s it’s like liv­ing in Paris as a Book­seller.

    - Shake­speare & Co. Book­selling Phi­los­o­phy and the con­cept of Tum­ble­weeds Pro­gram.

    - Pub­lish­ing and writ­ing process of a Book on the shop’s his­to­ry. (A His­to­ry of the Rag & Bone Shop of the Heart)

    - What Rad­i­cal & fresh change can we expect from the book­shop in future keep­ing pan­dem­ic and dis­rup­tion of Ama­zon as a part of the equa­tion.

  • RISHABH CHADDHA says:

    Sylvia Whit­man walks a fine line between pre­serv­ing her father’s orig­i­nal idea and mak­ing sure Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny , Paris doesn’t get left behind.

    So hap­py to share this won­der­ful con­ver­sa­tion with Sylvia Whit­man
    who is the own­er of Shake­speare & Co. , Paris (the leg­endary Eng­lish Book­store across from Notre Dame)

    https://rishabh1406.substack.com/p/shakespeare-company-paris-an-interview-with-sylvia-whitman-483c3d601e99

    We major­ly dis­cussed :-

    – Rich & organ­ic his­to­ry of the Book­shop. When & how the book­shop came into exis­tence.

    – Cura­tion Strat­e­gy of the Book­shop

    – How Paris evokes Poet­ry and what’s it’s like liv­ing in Paris as a Book­seller.

    – Shake­speare & Co. Book­selling Phi­los­o­phy and the con­cept of Tum­ble­weeds Pro­gram.

    – Pub­lish­ing and writ­ing process of a Book on the shop’s his­to­ry. (A His­to­ry of the Rag & Bone Shop of the Heart)

    – What Rad­i­cal & fresh change can we expect from the book­shop in future keep­ing pan­dem­ic and dis­rup­tion of Ama­zon as a part of the equa­tion.

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