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The Letters of Sylvia Beach Paperback – February 3, 2012

by Sylvia Beach (Author), Keri Walsh (Editor), Noël Riley Fitch (Foreword)
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 26 ratings
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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.
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  1. Print length
    376 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Columbia University Press
  4. Publication date
    February 3, 2012
  5. Dimensions
    5.78 x 0.93 x 8.99 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0231145373
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0231145374
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

The patron saint of independent booksellers everywhere and the spunky proprietress of Shakespeare and Company, the famed Left Bank bookshop, Beach was a one-woman clearinghouse for literary modernism, 'a culture hero of the avant-garde,' as Keri Walsh writes in her fine introduction to this collection.... Beach was an animated correspondent. -- Matthew Price ― Bookforum

Reveal[s] the difficulties faced head on by this patron saint of independent booksellers who altered the course of expression in print. ― Publishers Weekly

Academics and students interested in literary culture, especially of writers of the Lost Generation, will find this book valuable. ― Library Journal

This lovely book, scholarly and well annotated, is a pleasure to hold. It documents what Beach once called 'my missionary endeavor' and also what she called, correctly, her 'interesting life.' -- Dwight Garner ― New York Times

The consummate portrait of an incredible woman. -- Robert J. Wiersema ― The Vancouver Sun

Keri Walsh has produced a commendable work. -- Diane Leach ― Pop Matters

With The Letters of Sylvia Beach... we now have an unvarnished view of life from the bookshop floor. -- John Palattella ― The Nation

Keri Walsh's compact and revealing volume introduces Beach as a character's character ― New Criterion

Beach's letters are crisp, detailed, patient, and articulate. Editor Walsh's meticulously orchestrated scholarly apparatus--footnotes, appendices, glossary, and index--all work well to enhance the material. -- David Emblidge ― Publishing Research Quarterly

Beach is an entertaining companion, a wonderful person to spend time with... readers...will be quick to celebrate this editorial achievement. ― Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada

About the Author

Keri Walsh is assistant professor of English at Fordham University in New York.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Columbia University Press (February 3, 2012)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 376 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0231145373
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0231145374
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.2 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.78 x 0.93 x 8.99 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 26 ratings

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  2. Keri Walsh

    Keri Walsh

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    Keri Walsh is Associate Professor and Director of the Institute of Irish Studies at Fordham University in New York.

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Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
26 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

MAP MBA
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant US woman w Parisian Bookstore published top book of 20th C, ULYSSES
Reviewed in the United States on April 17, 2023
Verified Purchase
Brilliant collection by Keri Walsh of letters by Sylvia Beach who bravely published Joyce's Ulysses, when British and American male Puritans were running around proclaiming "vice" merely for the extraordinary recording by James Joyce of daily observations of Leopold Bloom, circumnavigating Dublin in one day, arguably the most compassionate character in literature perhaps, and I include Shakespeare in my literary review. Keri Walsh has produced a scholarly and lively edition which gives us a glimpse into how a non-publisher, non-editor, non-printer undertook the Herculean task to get Joyce published successfully, after many earlier failed attempts in serialization. BRAVO TO PROF KERI WALSH! Fascinating.
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linda sparks
5.0 out of 5 stars Midnight At Shakespere and Company?
Reviewed in the United States on May 4, 2014
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I love this collection of letters. Sylvia Beach was a hero to me as I love books. What could be more romantic, perhaps, than owning a bookshop in Paris in the time between the wars. She met every one and helped many. Ms. Walsh did a great job of footnoting to enlighten the reader. One gets a good sense of Sylvia Beach--her humor, her integrity, her intellect. I wish Woody Allen had had his character meet her in her bookshop in Midnight in Paris as she was to me a more important figure in that era than Gertrude Stein! I only wish there had been more letters!
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Marian Hauge
5.0 out of 5 stars Sylvia Beach fantastic letters
Reviewed in the United States on May 17, 2019
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As always Miss Beach entertains, fascinates and educates. Her letters are brilliant and a real insight into who and what she was. She will be a role model for many , just as she has been and will continue into the future. She is part of Paris, one of the best parts of Paris.
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Christian Schlect
4.0 out of 5 stars On the Beach
Reviewed in the United States on January 12, 2011
Letters sent from Paris and other points by Sylvia Beach to her many friends, over many years. It helps that many of these friends became giants of literature, such as Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, and Ernest Hemingway.

While Ms. Beach was a good writer, these letters tend to be of a more family, friendship, or book-business nature. Not much talk of current politics or general social trends. For example, no discussion of her time while interned in France during World War II. However any one interested in the literary life and personalities--especially Joyce--of Paris in the first half of the last century would profit from this book.

Keri Walsh has done a superior editing job with this collection of letters. Her occasional comments on the text are clear, unobtrusive, and helpful.

(I especially enjoyed this book because it came to me as a gift from my youngest son, whose own birthday happens to fall on Bloomsday. He bought it in Paris at Shakespeare and Company, the successor bookstore named in homage to Sylvia Beach's original.)
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Michael B
5.0 out of 5 stars A must-have for any Lost Generation aficionado
Reviewed in the United States on November 5, 2010
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These precious letters from Sylvia Beach to some of the world's most important literary figures of the last century are essential reading for anyone whose interest lies in the expat, modernist movement in 20th Century Paris. Such a wonderful peek into the past though Sylvia's own voice. HIghly recommended.
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Tamara Jonas
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on April 3, 2018
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I like the book
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CHESTER PAGE
5.0 out of 5 stars PRICELESS COLLECTION OF FASCINATING LETTERS
Reviewed in the United States on June 5, 2010
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SO GRATEFUL TO HAVE THESE LETTERS OF THE WONDERFUL SYLVIA BEACH, A PERSON SO IMPORTANT IN THE PARIS LITERARY WORLD OF THE 20'S AND 30'S.
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buckwriter
5.0 out of 5 stars Incredible lady!
Reviewed in the United States on October 31, 2018
The Letters of Sylvia Beach edited by Keri Walsh with a Foreword by Noel Riley Fitch published by Columbia University Press is a joyous epistolary book and you will discover a lot of fun reading it.

If you want to discover the character, vitality of the creator of Shakespeare and Company, the famous American bookshop located in Paris, Sylvia Beach, there's no other better way than this one: reading her own written words. Wagons of connections, you won't get lost. At the end of the book a glossary of correspondents will help you if you need some clarification. Yes, because Sylvia Beach, although pictures speak of a shy lady, was a hurricane of joy, interests, plenty of enthusiasm for life, people, news, books, events.

Released years ago, this book is a fresh, beautiful, intelligent and stunning gem for all that people in love for the french adventure started by Sylvia Beach: the creation of an American bookshop to Paris a place, Shakespeare&Co. that was also aggregation, solidarity, mutual help, a literary place where people could breath profound and good culture; a place that meant creativity in motion if we think at the elaboration and contribution given by Sylvia Beach and her collaborators to the final edition of the Ulysses by James Joyce and its publication.
A place, Shakespeare and Company where you would have found suggestions, if you were a potential writer, for trying to understand which publishing houses would have been interested to release your book; a place born for exchanging opinions; a place of books and great readings.

At that time Paris, we are on 1919, was the most important intellectual center for Americans in Europe. If Italy was chosen by Americans for the beauty of lands, warm weather, it was Paris where a lot of still unknown young American writers and painters decided of living in.

The presence of friends and colleagues in Paris meant to Americans an irresistible attraction.

When Sylvia decided to create, thanks also to the support of her companion Adrianne, her mother, her sisters, this bookshop, she was surrounded by Ezra Pound and wife; Ernest Hemingway, still a young author and wife, James Joyce and family, McAlmon, publisher and writer, Francis Scott Fitzgerald and lady, Gertrude Stein and companion.
In this fertile humus, not the baddest one of the world, you agree with me, Shakespeare and Company was born at the number 12 of rue de l'Odeon. It was August 1919.

Sylvia Beach's correspondence is a real joy; we will read her enthusiasm and joy for life, people, events, books, places, experiences.
Pure joy, enthusiastic, she constantly saw the glass half full and was in grade of telling the years and decades she lived in with lightness and vibrant details, without to lose for a second, that joy of donating herself to a distant friend in search of news from her. She lived in this world with enchanted eyes.

She was an avid and solid letter-writer and she took it pretty seriously. When she could not write at the end of the 1930s because of a persistent headache, migraine, she apologized with everyone; when she typed letters apologized with the receiver as well, because not hand-written.

She kept a strong correspondence with all her family members from Princeton, mother, father, siblings, and with so many other friends in the world. Her soul was genuinely enthusiastic.

We will assist thanks to her letters at the main big events of History: the re-election of Woodrow Wilson as President, a family-friend; the first world war; the arrival of Spanish Flu on 1918 reported by her mother, but also, we will read from her letters, the impressions Sylvia had about working in a farm.

Sylvia lived a privileged life; important friends and connections, she traveled a lot; France but Italy as well: Rapallo, Pistoia, Florence, although her biggest love remained France and Paris. Forever.

If she could not coronate her big love of a romantic french bookshop in the Greenwich Village of New York City, an impressive idea, she made it in Paris. Decades later, read what she wrote about her trip to NYC.

Sylvia preferred to lending books, creating a card for each consumer. The youngest one was a little boy. He read a book per day; the oldest one was a man in a wheelchair.
For everyone Sylvia, thanks to her passion for books, offered an escapism with great readings.

This correspondence starts on Nov 1901 endings when the author dies in 1962: so it doesn't touch just the history of Shakespeare and Company but also the personal existence of Sylvia Beach; the before and after. We meet along our way the enthusiasm of Sylvia Beach for the publication of the Ulysses by James Joyce, then the arrival of moment of big crisis for the bookshop. In this sense, Sylvia wrote on a letter dated: Jan 12 1934 to Stanislaus Joyce: "There are no Englishmen nor Americans in Paris any more. They have all gone home on account of the exchange and the depression. I wonder how things are in Italy. They are making a great effort to get visitors there, cheap railway fare and hotels, polite reception etc..."

Sylvia Beach thanks to her old connections received in various phases of her existence financial help for going on with her bookshop, or later when she fell sick and needed to be cured in the USA.

Stamps and pictures of Walt Whitman close to the one of Oscar Wilde (the daughter of Wilde was an affectionate of Shakespeare and Company) and James Joyce chosen for keeping warm and elegant the bookshop, the meeting with Joyce was "fatal" for Sylvia Beach.
She fell, intellectually fell in love for him, and she tried with all herself of helping Joyce in the process of publication of the Ulysses: Shaskepeare and Company became a publishing house.

This one of the Ulysses remains a controversial story because Sylvia Beach tried all her best for helping Joyce, losing at the end all the rights regarding the publication of Ulysses because the contract signed by the parts, Joyce and Beach, was not formal.

Joyce apart, we will see also some correspondence with Ernest Hemingway helpful in her life in various moments; letters were also sent and received when Adrianne died and Sylvia remained alone and frustrated for the sad departure of her companion of a life.

Impressive the letters about the years of the Second World War conflict and the austerity experienced in Paris by Sylvia Beach. Just people with a lot of money could buy food at the black market, wrote Sylvia.

'Til the end of her life, the character of Sylvia Beach was influential; she met new authors after the second world war conflict, she kept contact with her old friends, now famous and established writers; some of them died in the while, as in the case of Gertrude Stein; her voice, although the new bookshop is not located anymore where the old one was, is still whispering if we think that the new Shakespeare and Company was wanted, opened and owned by George Whitman who named her daughter Sylvia Beach Whitman after Sylvia Beach.
Sylvia Beach Whitman is the new owner of Shakespeare and Company.
The story continues...

Highly recommended, if you love epistolary genre, it's impressive, and if you love Shakespeare and Company :-) Paris and that precise historical moment.

I thank Columbia University Press for the physical copy of this book.
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