Shakespeare and Company - Sylvia Beach

 

I know of  know institution in Paris that captures the Lost Generation - Hemingway, Joyce, Eliot, Stein, MacLeish, and Fitzgerald - than this small bookstore and the memoir of the bookstore by Sylvia Beach who owned and operated it is a classic peak into that era and literature.

Monnier in front of Shakespeare and Company

Sylvia Beach inside Shakespeare and CO. 

Across the street from Monnier's French bookshop Sylvia had a friend and partner in the book trade.  They collaborated and brought together the artistic stars of their era. Shakespeare and Company sold books, but it seems that the primary importance was serving as a subscription lending library.   For a fee customers could take home and read and enjoy the books without buying them.

Writers, like Hemingway, used this library service to hone their skills, study style and words, and educate themselves.  Each of those "Customer - client - friends" is featured in this book and their portrait  provides and excellent insight.

But the most engaging effort was the publication of James Joyce book - Ulysses.  Beach published no other book, but this was an effort that for love, not for money - Joyce burnt through all the money that came in for the book.  James Joyce has a special place throughout the book and this complex Irish Writer comes through the simple, but insightful short essays that serve as chapters.

James Joyce