The Letters of Sylvia Beach

Sylvia Beach, Keri Walsh

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780231517843
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Letters
• Index: Literature

Founder of the Left Bank bookstore Shakespeare and Company and the first publisher of James Joyce's Ulysses, Sylvia Beach had a legendary facility for nurturing literary talent. In this first collection of her letters, we witness Beach's day-to-day dealings as bookseller and publisher to expatriate Paris. Friends and clients include Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, H. D., Ezra Pound, Janet Flanner, William Carlos Williams, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, and Richard Wright. As librarian, publicist, publisher, and translator, Beach carved out a unique space for herself in English and French letters.

This collection reveals Beach's charm and resourcefulness, sharing her negotiations with Marianne Moore to place Joyce's work in The Dial; her battle to curb the piracy of Ulysses in the United States; her struggle to keep Shakespeare and Company afloat during the Depression; and her complicated affair with the French bookstore owner Adrienne Monnier. These letters also recount Beach's childhood in New Jersey; her work in Serbia with the American Red Cross; her internment in a German prison camp; and her friendship with a new generation of expatriates in the 1950s and 1960s. Beach was the consummate American in Paris and a tireless champion of the avant-garde. Her warmth and wit made the Rue de l'Odéon the heart of modernist Paris.

INDEX

Sylvia Beach is abbreviated SB throughout. Photographs are numbered Fig. 1 through Fig. 30. Locators with an “n” refer to footnotes.

Abbey at Ligugé, France

ABC for Book Collectors (Carter and Barker)

Ader, Richard

Agendas (A. Monnier)

agricultural work, France, Fig. 3

airplanes, air travel: to California in 1936, 176, 217; and diversion of publishing funds; Hemingway crash; to New York in 1953, 224-25

Albatross Press: about; publication of Ulysses (Joyce); representatives

Aldington, Richard

Alice B. Toklas Cookbook, The (Toklas)

Always Room at the Top (Walska)

American Civil Liberties Union

American Hunger (Wright)

American Junior Red Cross

American Library, Paris: directors; donation of library to; establishment; holdings by

American Red Cross, Balkan Commission, Belgrade

Americans: abandonment of Paris in the 1930s and ‘40s; in Belgrade, comments on; interest in modernist literature; love of comfort, standard of living; return to Paris

American University Women’s Club

Anderson, Margaret

Anderson, Sherwood

Anglo-American Rest House, Belgrade, Serbia

“Anna Livia Plurabelle” (Joyce): efforts to find reviewer for; Gaige publication of in New York; publication and suppression of; voice recording of. See also Finnegan’s Wake; “Work in Progress”

Années Vingt: Les Écrivains Américains à Paris et Leurs Amis(The Twenties: American Writers and Their Friends in Paris) exhibition: catalog for; costs of; damage to items during efforts to bring to United States; the event; preparations for

Anne of Green Gables (film)

Antheil, Elizabeth “Böske” Markus: biographical information; letter to; move to California

Antheil, George: apartment above Shakespeare and Co., Fig. 9; Ballet mécanique; biographical information; health problems; letters to; letters to; move to California; patrons; performances of works by; SB’s criticism of; scores for Hollywood movies; Sheldon’s bust of

Anthology of Black Humor (Breton)

Antigone (Cocteau)

Antony and Cleopatra (Shakespeare), Paris performance

apartment above Shakespeare and Company (rue l’Odéon): floods in; purchase and costs of maintaining; upstairs neighbors; use of as work space

Apollinaire, Guillaume

Appalachian region

Aran Islandsvisit

Arliss, George

Armstrong, Edwin R.

Art of Poetry, The (Valéry)

Ashcroft, Peggy

Ashe of Rings (McAlmon)

Atlantic Monthly, Wright essay in

Aubier, Jean

Austen, Jane

Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, The (Stein)

Autobiography (Williams)

Aventurier, L’ (play)

Bachelard, Gaston (The Poetics of Space)

Back to Montparnasse: Glimpses of Broadway in Bohemia (Huddleston)

Bailbyéon

Bakstéon

Baldwin, Elizabeth

Ballet mécanique (Antheil)

Ballets Suédois, Paris performances

Barbare en Asie (Barbarian in Asia) (Michaux), SB’s English translation

Barker, Nicholas

Baroja, Pio

Barry, Robert J, Sr.

Barzun, Jacques

Baudelaire, Charles (Flowers of Evil), English translation

Bazalgette, Leon

Beach, Cyprian (Eleanor Elliott) (sister): biographical information; film career; letters to; letters to; letters to; letters to (undated); money and other help from; musical studies; nicknames; in Paris; photograph of, Fig. 4; references to; relationship with; visit to

Beach, Eleanor Orbison (mother): biographical information; financial support for daughters; impact of First World War; import/export business; letters to- ; letter to from Sweden, undated; money from to open Shakespeare and Co.; in Paris; photograph of, Fig. 5; references to; return to Princeton

Beach, Holly (Mary Hollingsworth Morris) (sister): biographical information; dancing skills, Fig. 2; home in Greenwich, Conn.; letters to; letters to; letters to; letters to; money and other help from; popularity; praise for; secretarial studies; visits with; work for American Red Cross

Beach, Sylvester Woodbridge (father): automobile accident; biographical information; First Presbyterian Church, Princeton; letters to, ca. 1910, 5; letters to, ca. 1914, 20-21; letters to; in Paris; removal from Princeton to California; SB’s relationship with; support for Roosevelt; at Wilson’s funeral in Princeton, Fig. 6

Beach, Sylvia (Nancy Woodbridge): during 1917 grape harvest (photograph), Fig. 3; ability to nurture talent; with Adrienne Monnier (photograph), Fig. 18; at age 15 (photograph), Fig. 1; at age 73, Lennon’s description; in apartment following Liberation (photograph), Fig. 24; birth name; bookplate, Fig. 10; central role in expatriate community; childhood; death; at dedication of Joyce Tower (photograph), Fig. 30; honors and awa...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Dedication
• LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• CHRONOLOGY
• I - FRIENDSHIP AND TRAVEL
• II - WORLD WAR I
• III - SHAKESPEARE AND COMPANY: EXPATRIATES
• IV - SHAKESPEARE AND COMPANY: 1930s
• V - POSTWAR
• VI - OLD FRIENDS AND TRUE
• VII - LEGACIES
• Appendix I - MORRILL CODY’S ARTICLE ON SHAKESPEARE AND COMPANY
• Appendix II - BEACH’S LETTER OF PROTEST AGAINST THE PIRATING OF ULYSSES ...
• Appendix III - BEACH’S UNSENT LETTER TO JAMES JOYCE (APRIL 12 , 1927)
• Appendix IV - BEACH’S SPEECH FOR THE INSTITUT RADIOPHONIQUE D’EXTENSION UNIVERSITAIRE
• GLOSSARY OF CORRESPONDENTS
• INDEX
• Copyright Page