The Week in History, March 8th – 14th.

Sylvia Beach ¹

[On working with James Joyce:] So, either you run your publishing business far away, where your writer can’t get at it, or you publish right alongside of him – and have much more fun – and much more expense. – Sylvia Beach ²

This week in 1887, bookstore owner and publishing entrepreneur Sylvia Beach was born in Baltimore, Maryland.

Beach had lived in Paris, France as a child and fell in love with the country and it’s culture. She returned there as a young adult in 1916 and made it her home.³  During WWI she did volunteer relief work,⁴ and in 1918 met the owner of a bookshop who would become her partner, both professionally and domestically. Her name was Adrienne Monnier.⁵

Sylvia Beach, with Adrienne Monnier’s assistance, opened the bookstore, Shakespeare & Company,  an establishment that according to French author André Chamson: “…did more to link England, the United States, Ireland, and France than four great ambassadors combined.”⁶

Shakespeare & Company opened up just as the “Lost Generation”⁷ of authors began to appear on the scene. Through the meeting place of the bookstore, Beach supported them, and sometimes loaned them money. It was she who took the risk of publishing James Joyce’s Ulysses when no other publisher would.

Shakespeare & Company was forced to close during the German occupation of Paris in December of 1941. During the war Beach aided the French Resistance, sheltering allied airman who had been shot down over France.⁸ Although she never re-opened the bookstore, she remained in Paris until her death in 1962.  In homage to her and her legacy, the bookstore Le Mistral was renamed Shakespeare & Company in her honor.⁹

You can check out the book that most likely wouldn’t exist if Sylvia Beach hadn’t been it’s publisher: James Joyce’s Ulysses. It is available online through the Clark College Libraries.

¹ https://www.flickr.com/photos/xcaballe/2706139625
² https://www.azquotes.com/quote/1175756
³ https://www.centrehistory.org/sylvia-beach/
⁴ https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sylvia-Beach
⁵ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Beach
⁶ https://shakespeareandcompany.com/35/history/95/sylvia-beachs-shakespeare-and-company-1919-1941
⁷ ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Generation
⁸ Kirkpatrick, Helen (October 22, 1944). “Daring American Actress Sheltered Allied Fliers 2 Doors From Gestapo”. The Pittsburgh Press. Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh. p. 14. Retrieved 24 January 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
⁹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Beach#CITEREFSharkey2002