Sylvia Beach

Sylvia Beach (March 14 1887 – October 5 1962), born Nancy Woodbridge Beach in her father's parsonage in Baltimore, Maryland, was one of the leading expatriate figures in Paris between World War I and II.

Early life
Sylvia Beach was born on March 14, 1887, the second of three daughters of Sylvester Beach and Eleanor Thomazine Orbison. Although named Nancy after her grandmother Orbison she later decided to change her name to Sylvia. Her maternal grandparents were missionaries to India and her father, a Presbyterian minister, was descended from several generations of clergymen. When the girls were young the family lived in Baltimore and in Bridgewater, New Jersey. Then in 1901 the family moved to France when Sylvester Beach was appointed as assistant minister of the American Church in Paris and director of the American student center.

As a young woman Sylvia Beach spent over three years in Paris (1902-1905) but returned to New Jersey in 1906 when her father  became minister of the First Presbyterian Church of Princeton. After her family returned to the United States Sylvia made several trips back to Europe, lived for two years in Spain, and worked for the Balkan Commission of the Red Cross. During the last years of the Great War she was drawn back to Paris to study contemporary French literature. While doing research at the Bibliothèque Nationale, Sylvia Beach found the name of Adrienne Monnier’s bookshop in a French literary journal and decided to seek out the little store  on  the rue de l’Odéon. There she was warmly welcomed by the owner who, to her surprise, was a plump fair-haired  young woman 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.” (Beach, Shakepeare & Co. p.13). Although Sylvia was dressed in a Spanish cloak and hat, Adrienne knew immediately that she was American. At that first meeting Adrienne declared “I like Americans very much.”  Sylvia  replied that she liked France very much—and so began a close friendship that lasted until Adrienne’s suicide in 1955.

Shakespeare and Company
Sylvia immediately became a member of Adrienne’s lending library and when she was in Paris, she regularly attended the readings by authors such as André Gide, Paul  Valéry and  Jules Romains. Inspired by the literary life of the Left Bank and by Adrienne’s efforts to  promote innovative writing,  Sylvia dreamed of starting a  branch of Adrienne’s book shop in New York that would offer contemporary French works to American readers. Since her only capital was $ 3,000 which her mother gave her from her savings, Sylvia found that she could not afford such a venture in New York. However Paris rents were much cheaper and the exchange rates favorable, so with Adrienne’s help, Sylvia opened an English language bookstore and lending library that she named Shakespeare and Company. Four years earlier when she opened her shop, Adrienne was among the first women in France to found her own book store.

Shakespeare and Company quickly attracted both French and American readers—including a number of aspiring writers to whom Sylvia offered hospitality and encouragement as well as books. As the franc dropped in value and the favorable exchange rate attracted a huge influx of Americans, Sylvia’s shop flourished and soon needed more space. In May 1921 Shakespeare and Company moved to 12 rue de l’Odéon, just across the street from Adrienne’s Maison des Amis des Livres. Shakespeare and Company gained fame after it published James Joyce's Ulysses in 1922, as a result of Joyce's inability to get an edition out in English-speaking countries. Beach would later be financially stranded when Joyce signed on with another publisher, leaving Beach in debt after bankrolling, and suffering severe losses from Ulysses.

Shakespeare and Company experienced difficulty throughout the Great Depression of the 1930s, and was kept afloat by the generosity of Beach's circle of wealthy friends, including Bryher. In 1936 when Sylvia Beach thought that she would be forced to close her shop, André Gide organized a group of writers into a club called Friends of Shakespeare and Company. Subscribers paid 200 francs a year to attend readings in  at  Shakespeare and Company. Although subscriptions were limited to a select group of 200 people (the maximum number  the store could accommodate) the fame of the  French and American authors participating in readings during those two years attracted a great deal of attention to the store. Sylvia Beach recalled that by then, “we were so glorious with all these famous writers and all the press we received that we began to do very well in business” (Beach p.211). Shakespeare and Company remained open after the fall of Paris, but  by the end of 1941  Sylvia Beach was forced to close.

Sylvia Beach was interned for six months during World War II, but kept her books hidden in a vacant apartment upstairs at 12 rue de l'Odeon. The shop was symbolically liberated by Ernest Hemingway in person in 1944 but never re-opened.

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 Benet, Aleister Crowley, John Quinn, Berenice Abbott, Man Ray, and many others.

A new bookshop founded in the 1950s by American George Whitman (no relation to the poet) at a different Parisian location was granted permission by Sylvia Beach to use the name "Shakespeare & Company".

Beach remained in Paris until her death in 1962. Although her income was modest during the last years of her life, she was widely honored for her publication of Ulysses and her support of aspiring writers during the 1920s. Sylvia Beach was buried in Princeton Cemetery. Her papers are archived at Princeton University.