Sylvia Beach
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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.
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Early Life
Her father was a Presbyterian pastor and his work took the family to Paris in 1901. Beach was said to have loved Paris, and went to live there permanently in 1916 after working as a nurse in World War I.
Shakespeare and Company
In 1917 she met Adrienne Monnier, and the two women became lovers, an affair that would last more than twenty years. [1] The two founded a bookshop, called Shakespeare and Company, in November 1919. The bookshop became a focus for Americans. It 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.
Shakespeare and Company experienced difficulty throughout the Great Depression of the 1930s, and was kept afloat by the generosity of Beach's circle of friends, including Bryher. She was interned during World War II, and closed the shop hastily when the German/Nazi army occupied Paris in 1941. The shop was symbolically liberated by Ernest Hemingway in person in 1944 but never re-opened.
Image:Shakespeare and Company store in Paris.jpg 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". It has had a rocky history. Whitman did not register or pay taxes for many years. He was—like many other artists in trouble with Internal Revenue—saved by André Malraux.
Beach returned to Paris in 1955, following the suicide of her now former lover, Monnier. She later met Camilla Steinbrugge, with whom she developed a relationship. Beach remained in Paris until her death in 1962. [2]
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 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.
Death
Beach remained in Paris until her death. She was buried in Princeton Cemetery.
Archive
Her papers are archived at Princeton University.
External link
References
- Template:Cite book
- Alix Sharkey, (March 3, 2002). "The Beats go on". The Observor Magazine. An article on George Whitman and the history of Shakespeare and Company under his proprietorship.de:Sylvia Beach