Shakespeare and Company was an influential English-language bookstore in Paris founded by
Sylvia Beach in 1919; Beach published
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (born James Augusta Joyce; 2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influentia ...
's 1922 novel ''
Ulysses'' at the bookstore. The store closed in 1941.
Shakespeare and Company was established by Beach, an American expatriate, in November 1919, at 8 rue Dupuytren, before moving to larger premises at 12
rue de l'Odéon in the
6th arrondissement in 1921. During the 1920s, Beach's shop and lending library was a gathering place for many then-aspiring and renowned writers and poets such as
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an List of poets from the United States, American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Ita ...
,
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway ( ; July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer and journalist. Known for an economical, understated style that influenced later 20th-century writers, he has been romanticized fo ...
,
Djuna Barnes,
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (born James Augusta Joyce; 2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influentia ...
,
F. Scott Fitzgerald,
Gertrude Stein, and
Ford Madox Ford.
Shakespeare and Company was forced to close in 1941 during the
German occupation of Paris. Beach was arrested and imprisoned for six months by Nazi authorities. Upon her release toward the end of the war, Beach was in ill health and was never able to reopen the store. The current store is open and trading across from Notre Dame.
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History
Sylvia Beach, an American
expatriate from New Jersey, established Shakespeare and Company on 19 November 1919, at 8 rue Dupuytren.
Feminist novelist Annie Winifred Ellerman, who wrote under the pseudonym
Bryher, helped fund the bookstore with an inheritance from her father, shipping magnate
Sir John Ellerman.
The store functioned as a lending library as well as a bookstore. In 1921, Beach moved it to a larger location at 12
rue de l'Odéon, where it remained until 1941. During this period, the store was the center of Anglo-American literary culture and
modernism
Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...
in Paris. Writers and artists of the
Lost Generation, such as Ernest Hemingway and
F. Scott Fitzgerald, as well as
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an List of poets from the United States, American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Ita ...
,
Gertrude Stein,
George Antheil,
Djuna Barnes,
Mina Loy, and
Man Ray, among others, spent a great deal of time there.
The shop was nicknamed "
Stratford-on-Odéon" by James Joyce, who used it as his office;
Noël Riley Fitch wrote that Shakespeare and Company was a "meeting place, clubhouse, post office, money exchange, and reading room for the famous and soon-to-be famous of the avant garde". Its books were considered high quality and reflected Beach's own taste. The store and its literary denizens are mentioned in Hemingway's ''
A Moveable Feast''. Patrons could buy or borrow books like
D. H. Lawrence's controversial ''
Lady Chatterley's Lover'', which had been banned in Britain and the United States.
Beach published Joyce's controversial book ''
Ulysses'' in 1922. It, too, was banned in the United States and Britain. Later editions were also published under the Shakespeare and Company imprint. She also encouraged the publication, in 1923, and sold copies of Hemingway's first book, ''
Three Stories and Ten Poems''.
At her bookstore, historic figures made rare appearances, readings of their work: Paul Valery, Andre Gide, and T.S. Eliot; Hemingway even broke his rule of not reading in public if
Stephen Spender would read with him, and Spender agreed, so Hemingway appeared for a rare reading in public with Stephen Spender.
Shakespeare and Company closed in December 1941 during the
German occupation of France in World War II. It has been suggested that it may have been ordered to shut because Beach denied a German officer the last copy of Joyce's ''
Finnegans Wake
''Finnegans Wake'' is a novel by Irish literature, Irish writer James Joyce. It was published in instalments starting in 1924, under the title "fragments from ''Work in Progress''". The final title was only revealed when the book was publishe ...
''.
References
Bibliography
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Further reading
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*Affleck, John
"Hemingway at Shakespeare & Company" ''Literary Traveler''.
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External links
Shakespeare and Company Projectat
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Shakespeare and Company (1919-1941)
Independent bookstores
Bookstores of Paris
Buildings and structures in the 6th arrondissement of Paris
Bookstores established in the 20th century
20th century in Paris
Lost Generation writers