This weeks podcast is all about Sylvia Beach the American that would become one of the most important literary connections in Paris for the “Lost Generation”. Born on March 14, 1887 in Baltimore Maryland, her father was a minister whose job would take the family to France in 1901. Her first taste of France would stay with her like it does with so many and would bring her back in 1917.
Towards the end of WWI she returned to Paris to study French literature when one day she stumbled across a lending library on Rue de l’Odeon, La Maison des Amis des Livres run by Adrienne Monnier. Beach would spend a lot of time at the shop and the two would become involved. She was going to return to Baltimore and open up her own shop but she decided to stay in Paris after her parents told her it would be easier to open her own shop in Paris and gave her $300.
Original location at 8 Rue Dupuytren
Almost 101 years ago on 19 November 1919 on 8 Rue Dupuytren she opened the very first Shakespeare and Company. Beach said the name came to her one night as she lay in bed and had her friend Charles Winzer create a sign and an oval portrait of Shakespeare to hang above the door. Furniture from flea markets filled the shop and books Beach found at bookshops in the Chevillet, Bourse and Boiveau filled the shelves. Friends in the states sent her boxes of books and Sylvia would visit London and return with trunks full of books whenever she had the money. She never set an opening date deciding the doors would open when she was finally ready. A friendly nearby waiter assisted in opening her shutters and in the windows the works of T.S. Eliot, Joyce and Whitman as she waited for her first customer. Her friends flooded in immediately and never stopped coming. Opening as a bookshop but also a lending library worked much better at this time in Paris. Customers could purchase a subscription and would allow them each month to borrow a few books.
Sylvia would remain at this location until May 1921 when she would move to the nearby Rue de l’Odeon where a young american writer, Ernest Hemingway would discover her as soon as he arrived in Paris. Hemingway and Beach had a close relationship that would last until he moved back to the US and one he always looked back on fondly with the literary trailblazer.
Second location at 12 Rue de l’Odeon
Many of the American expats spent hours in her store a day and served as a post office for them as well. Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Ford Maddox Ford and James Joyce could be found every day getting all the latest news and gossip. James Joyce, the rather melancholy author would sit at the small table by the window each and every day, working on Ulysses and sharing his frustration on his lack of publisher. The book that had already been seen in excerpts in the United States and was banned as soon as copies appeared. As an author of an English book it was a huge problem. One day Sylvia offered to publish Ulysses for Joyce, and he was of course over the moon.
To fund the project Sylvia began to pre-sell advanced copies and a printer in Dijon was happy to work with her. Joyce unfortunately wasn’t so easy to work with. He constantly kept changing the text and as soon as an edition was printed. Sylvia lost most of her money and without a contract for the first seven years she had very little protection. Joyce would later find a publisher and would walk away from Sylvia and all the work she had done that almost cost her Shakespeare & Co. When Andre Gide walked in one day and asked how she was and she let him know she may close, he organized all of the writers to sell tickets to live readings So much money was raised she was able to save her shop. She also created a catalog selling many of her first editions. Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises had been released and was in high demand.
Sylvia and James Joyce
When World War II began she kept her doors open until a German officer came in one day and wanted to buy her copy of FInnegans Wake that was sitting in the window. She refused to sell it to him which enraged him and he told her he would return. Two weeks later he arrived looking for the book that was no longer in the window or on the shelves. She told him it was gone but he didn’t like the answer and said she needed to find it and he would be back later that night for it.
Sylvia told all her friends who arrived with baskets and boxes. Within a few hours her shop was emptied into an apartment above including every piece of furniture, the shelves were removed and the sign painted over. When they came back weeks later they came this time for Sylvia herself. She was arrested and sent to an internment camp in Vittel where she would remain for six months. Thankfully she returned to Paris and hid in a student hostel on Boulevard Saint Michel. She was able to sneak out once a day to visit Adrienne but couldn’t return home until after the Liberation.
As soon as she returned to 18 Rue de l’Odeon her old friend Ernest Hemingway arrived barreling down the street calling up to her. It was August 26, 1944 and he would run up the stairs to his dear friend and ask what he could do for her. Sylvia and Adrienne asked him if he could remove the Germans still firing from the roofs of Odeon. Hemingway returned to his liberated Mercedes, grabbed some men and guns and returned to the roof of her building. Gun fire was heard for a few minutes and then total silence, Odeon was liberated and the nightmare was over.
Adrienne and Sylvia lived out the rest of their life on Rue de l’Odeon. Adrienne died on June 19, 1955 after she overdosed on sleeping pills. Sylvia would live on alone until October 5, 1962 of a heart attack. She wasn’t discovered for days. Such a sad ending to a woman that meant so much to so many and shaped many of the greatest American writers in history.
18 Rue de l’Odeon
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