Sylvia Beach

Sylvia Beach (14 March 1887 – 5 October 1962), born Nancy Woodbridge Beach, was an American-born bookseller and publisher who lived most of her life in Paris, where she was one of the leading expatriate figures between World War I and II.

She is known for her Paris bookstore, Shakespeare and Company, where she published James Joyce's book Ulysses (1922), and encouraged the publication of and sold copies of Ernest Hemingway's first book, Three Stories and Ten Poems (1923).

Early life Beach was born in her father's parsonage in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, on 14 March 1887, the second of three daughters of Sylvester Beach and Eleanor Thomazine Orbison. She had an older sister, Holly, and a younger sister, Cyprian. Although named Nancy after her grandmother Orbison, she later decided to change her name to Sylvia. Beach was frail and unhealthy, having chronic headaches that plagued her for the rest of her life. Her maternal grandparents were missionaries to India, and her father, a Presbyterian minister, was descended from several generations of clergymen. Beach's education featured sporadic tutoring, but no formal education. at 7 rue de l'Odéon, Paris VI. There she was welcomed by the owner who, to her surprise, was a plump, fair-haired young woman, Adrienne Monnier. Monnier was wearing a garment that looked like a cross between a peasant's dress and a nun's habit, "with a long full skirt … and a sort of tight-fitting velvet waistcoat over a white silk blouse. She was in gray and white like her bookshop." Although Beach was dressed in a Spanish cloak and hat, Monnier said later she knew immediately that Beach was American. At that first meeting, Monnier declared, "I like America very much". Beach replied that she liked France very much. They later became lovers and lived together for 36 years The shop sign featured a nearly bald, slat-eyed Shakespeare painted by a friend of Monnier's. On either side of the storefront written was written "Lending Library" and "Bookhop", which was misspelled initially.

Plaque at 12 Rue de l'Odéon, Paris VI, location of Shakespeare and Company, which reads "In 1922, at this location, Mlle. Sylvia Beach published Ulysses by James Joyce." In July 1920, Beach met Irish writer James Joyce at a dinner party hosted by French poet André Spire. Soon after, Joyce joined her lending library. Joyce had been trying, unsuccessfully, to publish his manuscript for his masterpiece, Ulysses, and Beach, seeing his frustration, offered to publish it. She hired M. Maurice Darantière, a master printer from Dijon who did not understand English, to oversee the printing. Beach kept her books hidden in a vacant apartment upstairs at 12 rue de l'Odeon. Ernest Hemingway symbolically "liberated" the shop in person in 1944, but it never re-opened for business.

Later life In 1956, Beach wrote Shakespeare and Company, a memoir of the inter-war years that details the cultural life of Paris at the time. The book contains first-hand observations of James Joyce, 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 Vincent Benét, Aleister Crowley, Harry Crosby, Caresse Crosby, John Quinn, Berenice Abbott, Man Ray, and many others.

After Monnier's suicide in 1955, Beach had a relationship with Camilla Steinbrugge.

American George Whitman opened a new bookshop in 1951 at a different location in Paris (in the rue de la Bûcherie) originally called Le Mistral, but renamed Shakespeare and Company in 1964 in honor of the late Sylvia Beach. Since his death in 2011, it has been run by his daughter Sylvia Whitman.