The Letters of Sylvia Beach

Founder of the Left Bank bookstore Shakespeare and Company and the first publisher of James Joyce's Ulysses, Sylvia Beach was a legendary nurturer of literary talent. In this first collection of her letters, we witness Beach's day-to-day dealings as bookseller and publisher to expatriate Paris. Her friends and patrons included Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, H. D., Ezra Pound, Janet Flanner, William Carlos Williams, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, and Richard Wright. As a librarian, publicist, publisher, and translator, Beach carved out a unique space for herself in English and French letters. She negotiated with Marianne Moore to place Joyce's work in The Dial, she battled the piracy of Ulysses in the United States, and she struggled to keep Shakespeare and Company afloat during the Depression. These letters shed new light on Beach's childhood in New Jersey; her work in Serbia with the American Red Cross; her internment in a German prison camp; her relationship with French bookstore owner Adrienne Monnier; and her friendship with a new generation of expatriates in the 1950s and 1960s. A consummate American in Paris and a tireless champion of the avant-garde, Beach's warmth and wit made the Rue de l'Odeon the heart of modernist Paris.