Sylvia Beach (1887-1962) has been called the patron saint of independent bookstores. Founder of the Left Bank's Shakespeare & Company in 1919 and first publisher of James Joyce's Ulysses (1922), her facility for nurturing talent and promoting the avant-garde are legendary. In this first collection of her letters, we witness Beach's day-to-day dealings as bookseller and publisher to expatriate Paris. Beach's friends and clients included Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, H.D., Ezra Pound, Janet Flanner, William Carlos Williams, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, and Richard Wright. As librarian, publicist, publisher, and translator, she carved out a unique place at the crossroads of English and French letters. This volume reveals Beach's wit and resourcefulness, sharing her negotiations with Marianne Moore to place Joyce's work in The Dial; her battle to curb the piracy of Ulysses in the United States; her struggle to keep Shakespeare & Company afloat during the Depression; and her long love affair with the French bookstore owner Adrienne Monnier. The letters also illuminate Beach's childhood in Princeton, New Jersey, her work in Serbia for the American Red Cross, her internment in a German prison camp during the Second World War, and her friendships with a new expatriate generation in the 1950s and 1960s. The consummate American in Paris and a tireless champion of the avant-garde, through her letters, Beach provides a fresh window into the modernist movement.

About the Author

Keri Walsh is assistant professor of English at Fordham University in New York.

Table of Contents

List of IllustrationsPreface by Noel Riley FitchAcknowledgmentsIntroductionReferencesChronologyTHE LETTERS OF SYLVIA BEACH I. Friendship and Travel II. World War I III. Shakespeare and Company: Expatriates IV. Shakespeare and Company: 1930s V. Postwar VI. Old Friends and True VII. LegaciesAppendix 1. Morrill Cody's Article on Shakespeare and Company for Publishers Weekly (April 12, 1924) Appendix 2. Beach's Letter of Protest against the Pirating of Ulysses (February 2, 1927) Appendix 3. Beach's Unsent Letter to James Joyce (April 12, 1927) Appendix 4. Beach's Speech for the Institut Radiophonique d'Extension Universitaire (May 24, 1927) Glossary of Correspondents Index

Prizes

This finely wrought collection of The Letters of Sylvia Beach makes one grateful that those who fashioned modernism also took time to write letters. In the case of Sylvia Beach, hers document not just the expected-her role in bringing forth and defending James Joyce's Ulysses and her creation of an extraordinary lending library where expatriates converged. Here too is the everyday, recorded for 'Dearest Little Mother,' or shared with her love, Adrienne Monnier. We experience the advice of a well-grounded common reader and the strange encounters of an intrepid new woman, who found her way to Serbia in the wake of World War I and through occupied Paris during World War II. Keri Walsh has expertly tapped into this archive, lending accessibility with concise notes and identifications of correspondents. In this volume, both the times and the woman take on new life. -- Bonnie Kime Scott, San Diego State University, editor of Selected Letters of Rebecca West

Reviews

The patron saint of independent booksellers everywhere and the spunky proprietress of Shakespeare and Company, the famed Left Bank bookshop, Beach was a one-woman clearinghouse for literary modernism, 'a culture hero of the avant-garde,' as Keri Walsh writes in her fine introduction to this collection... Beach was an animated correspondent. -- Matthew Price Bookforum Reveal[s] the difficulties faced head on by this patron saint of independent booksellers who altered the course of expression in print. Publishers Weekly 2/8/10 Academics and students interested in literary culture, especially of writers of the Lost Generation, will find this book valuable. Library Journal 2/15/10 This lovely book, scholarly and well annotated, is a pleasure to hold. It documents what Beach once called 'my missionary endeavor' and also what she called, correctly, her 'interesting life.' -- Dwight Garner New York Times 4/18/10 The consummate portrait of an incredible woman. -- Robert J. Wiersema The Vancouver Sun 6/20/10 Keri Walsh has produced a commendable work. -- Diane Leach Pop Matters 6/2/10 With The Letters of Sylvia Beach... we now have an unvarnished view of life from the bookshop floor. -- John Palattella The Nation 8/2/10 Keri Walsh's compact and revealing volume introduces Beach as a character's character New Criterion 11/1/10