Sylvia Beach (March 14 1887–October 5 1962), born Nancy Woodbridge Beach in her father's parsonage inBaltimore, Maryland, was one of the leading expatriate figures in Paris between World War I and II.
Her father was a Presbyterian pastor and his work took the family to Paris in 1901. Beach loved Paris, and went to live there permanently in 1916 after war work nursing. With her friend Adrienne Monnier she founded a bookshop, Shakespeare and Company, in November 1919, which became a focus for Americans. The bookshop became famous after it published James Joyce's Ulysses in 1922, as a result of Joyce's inability to get an edition out in English-speaking countries.
The bookshop was in difficulties throughout the depression of the 1930s, and was kept afloat by the generosity of her circle of friends, including Bryher. She was interned during World War II. The shop was symbolically liberated by Ernest Hemingway in person in 1944 but never re-opened.
A new bookshop founded in the 1950s by American George Whitman (no relations to the poet) was granted permission by Sylvia Beach to use the name "Shakespeare & Company". It had a rocky history. Whitman did not register or pay taxes for many years. He was—like many other artists in trouble with Internal Revenue—saved by André Malraux.
In 1956, Beach wrote a memoir of the inter-war years, titled Shakespeare and Company, which details the cultural life of Paris at the time. The book contains first-hand observations of D.H. Lawrence, Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Valery Larbaud , Thornton Wilder, André Gide, Leon-Paul Fargue , George Antheil, Robert McAlmon, Gertrude Stein, Stephen Benet , Aleister Crowley, John Quinn , Berenice Abbott, Man Ray, and many others.
Beach remained in Paris until her death.
External links
References
-
- Alix Sharkey, (March 3, 2002). "The Beats go on". The Observor Magazine. An article on George Whitman and the history of Shakespeare and Company under his proprietorship.
