#sylvia beach

[davidhudson]

Sylvia Beach, March 14, 1887 – October 5, 1962.

#sylvia beach #books

[lascitasdelashoras]

James Joyce with Sylvia Beach, Shakespeare and Co, Paris 1920

#james joyce #sylvia beach #shakespeare and company #paris #librería #escritores #libreros

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Be not inhospitable to strangers lest they be angels in disguise.

- W.B. Yeats

This is the quote from W.B. Yeats as a painted sign on the wall as you enter the famous bookstore Shakespeare and Company in Paris.

Strangers always found a welcome at Shakespeare and Company, where they could browse untroubled for hours, especially if they were aspiring writers themselves; and a few – well, a very few – of them may indeed have turned out to be angels, or at least angelic.

The original Shakespeare and Company shop was started in 1921 in the Rue de l’Odéon by Sylvia Beach, the daughter of a US Presbyterian minister. The first writer to patronise the shop was Gertrude Stein, but she fell out with Beach when she took up with James Joyce, whom Stein hated.

Beach published Joyce’s Ulysses when no established publisher would touch it, performing the arduous labour of love of proofreading it. Ernest Hemingway discovered the shop soon after his arrival in Paris, and wrote about it lovingly decades later in A Moveable Feast. When the Germans occupied Paris, Beach refused to sell a signed copy of Finnegans Wake to an invading officer. He said he would return for it the next day. So she moved all the books out and closed the shop. It was “liberated” by Hemingway himself in 1944. However, Beach didn’t have the heart to start again.

In 1948, after a wandering youth and war service, George Whitman came to Paris on the GI Bill, and in 1951 opened an English-language bookshop which he called Le Mistral. A few years later, he moved to the Rue de la Bûcherie, but didn’t rename the shop until after Beach’s death in 1961. He had been too shy to ask her if he could use the name, although they were friends and she used to come to readings at Le Mistral.

Whitman ran his shop as a species of anarchic democracy, even though in some respects he was a benevolent dictator. Anyone who called himself a writer could find a bed there, if there was one free, and stay as long as he liked or until Whitman got tired of him. The only rule for residents was that they must read a book a day and serve in the shop for an hour. One poet, or self-styled poet, who broke the second rule and lay in bed all day reading detective novels was ejected; but his chief offence was his choice of literature rather than his idleness.

The bookshop has its regulars, residents in Paris, not all of them English-speakers by any means, who use it as a sort of club and drop in for conversation and coffee.

Stock control has always been on the casual side. It’s not unknown for someone to lift a book from the shelves, slip it into his pocket, read it and return to sell it for the secondhand shelves the following day.

Inevitably, Shakespeare and Company has long been on the tourist trail, recommended in all the guides. This is just as well, because without their custom it’s hard to see how the shop could have survived. Many are in search of a copy of A Moveable Feast. This is not always on offer because, for some reason which I can’t remember, Whitman took a scunner to Hemingway. The tourists also toss coins into the well in the shop, and it’s not unusual to see an indigent young person lying on the floor and fishing for euros.

On occasion I drop in because the lure of its history is too much even if there are other good independent book stores nearby. Visitors to Paris always want me to take them there and I oblige them even if I feel its lost some of its past glory. Still, I always buy a few books because it’s the best way to support independent book stores in this age of Amazon, as every independent book store needs all the help it can get.

#yeats #wb yeats #quote #shakespeare and co #shakespeare and company #paris #book store #books #reading #historic #literature #sylvia beach #george whitman

[more-than-ideas]

Sylvia Beach

#more than ideas #so many fragile things #sylvia beach #booklover #sunday reading

[fantafumino]

Test cover for my next comic based on the life of Sylvia Beach.Screenplay by Emilia Cinzia PerriNext year for Bao Publishing.

#Sylvia beach #comic book #shakespeare and company #book cover

[i-fucked-your-milkshake]

One of the dopest literary stories of all time concerns the publication and distribution of Ulysses I’m not even a little bit joking.

James Joyce wrote Ulysses while living in Paris where he, and other modernist authors, hung out in a bookstore called Shakespeare and Company, founded by a woman named Sylvia Beach. The thing you gotta understand about this store and Sylvia is that this was The Place and she was That Bitch. If you were a writer and you came to Paris? You showed up. You bought a book. You talked with Sylvia. It was requisite. The result of this is that she was friends with all the modernists.

Joyce was kinda always perpetually fuckin broke and tended to overspend when he had money so he never had money for long. He was pretty broke at this time and was lamenting the fact that he couldn’t find a publisher to Sylvia. Sylvia was a big fan of Joyce’s work and also a good friend. She hated seeing him broke and was like “you know what my guy? Fuck it. I’ll publish your novel.”

So Joyce gets his book published and has some coin in his pocket and he’s happy. Sylvia has stepped up her career and she’s happy. Only problem? America is passing all sorts of obscenity laws about this time and the wretched moralists in charge have Heard About this book and will absolutely be destroying any copies that make it to port. Making matters worse is that there are hundreds of pre-orders that need to be fulfilled and she can’t do it without the books being confiscated and destroyed.

So Sylvia is lamenting this conundrum to her other good writer friend, Ernest Hemingway, who thinks for a minute and says “Sylvia, gimme a couple days and let me see what I can do.” What else do you say to Hemingway but “sure thing, Ernest.”

Couple days go by and Big Ern comes back to the store with a slip of paper. He hands that slip of paper to Sylvia and she sees it has a phone number. Hemingway tells her to call that number and tell who picks up that Ernest sent her.

There’s not a soul on earth who can resist that prompt and Sylvia, being both only human and also desperate to distribute this book she sunk money she couldn’t really afford into publishing, calls the number. Guy picks up. Asks a few questions about boxes and shipping addresses. Gives her an address in Canada and tells her to include the shipping invoices for the American addresses. Hangs up the phone.

So now a shit load of boxes containing James Joyce’s Ulysses are on their way to Canada. The address? Some fuckin apartment. Owned by This Guy. And everyday this guy takes a few books from the boxes, wraps them up and addresses them, tapes them to his body, and takes the ferry across the lake to the US where he casually slips them into the post boxes and goes on about his day.

Authorities are pretty baffled about how the book is being distributed but no one says a word about until Sylvia Beach spends roughly a page on it in her memoirs, “Shakespeare and Company.”

This was, I think, a few years before Hemingway had to look at F. Scott Fitzgerald’s dick and assure him it was a good size after Zelda told him he had a small cock during an argument…..but that’s another story.

#james joyce #ernest hemingway #sylvia beach #shakespeare and company #ulysses #f scott fitzgerald #Fitzgerald had a tiny pee pee #lit major #modernism #modernist authors

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

"They lived and laughed and loved and left." James Joyce, Finnegans Wake.

James Joyce with Sylvia Beach, 1925.

[De Burca Rare Books]

#quotes #James Joyce #Sylvia Beach #De Burca Rare Books #Finnegans Wake

[thequietabsolute]

— People do not know how dangerous lovesongs can be

James Joyce — Ulysses, from episode 9. Scylla and Charybdis

[pub., Shakespeare & Co., Paris, 1922.]

#James Joyce #ulysses #scylla and charybdis #homer #william shakespeare #shakespeare #music #love #love songs #literature #quotes #sylvia beach

[kiki-de-la-petite-flaque]

Sylvia beach and James Joyce

#Sylvia beach #ames Joyce

[seekers-who-are-lovers]

Behind the famous bookstore in Paris, Shakespeare and Company, were a lesbian owner Sylvia Beach and her lover Adrienne Monnier.

The bookshop Shakespeare and Company has been at the heart of the Paris literary scene for decades, particularly during the 1920s and 1930s. It was set up by American Sylvia Beach who, along with her partner Adrienne Monnier, ran the store until World War II.

…

Down the street on rue de l'Odéon was another bookstore, La Maison des Amis des Livres.

Its owner Adrienne Monnier was Sylvia's partner. Their love story was said to have begun when Sylvia's hat blew away in the wind on rue de l'Odéon, and Adrienne chased after it. 'J'aime beaucoup l'Amérique,' declared Adrienne, to which Sylvia replied, 'J'aime beaucoup la France.' They were a couple for 36 years until Adrienné's death in 1955.

Sylvia was also the publisher of James Joyce’s “Ulysses.”

#sylvia beach #adrienne monnier #shakespeare and company #bookstore #Paris #lgbtq history #what a partnership

[dobstey]

Sylvia Beach Interview on James Joyce and Shakespeare & Company (1962)

#sylvia beach #james joyce #shakespeare & company #french resistance #literature #Youtube

[davidhudson]

Sylvia Beach, March 14, 1887 – October 5, 1962.

With James Joyce (left) and Adrienne Monnier (right) at Shakespeare & Co. 1938 photo by Gisèle Freund.

#sylvia beach #james joyce #adrienne monnier #literature #books

[litafficionado]

-Sylvia Beach, in a letter to James Joyce dt. 29 April, 1927

#Sylvia Beach #James Joyce #lit #letters #Your Friend If You Ever Had One

[tenderbittersweet]

Call the Midwife fic inspo

#quotes #sylvia beach #call the midwife #fic to write #fic inspo #op

[fantafumino]

Pretty Beach ☕️

Screenplay : @emiliacinziaperri

#sylvia beach #comic book #graphic novel

[queerographies]

[Sylvia Beach][Emilia Cinzia Perri][Silvia Vanni]

Shakespeare and Company: la storia della libraia Sylvia Beach Titolo: Sylvia BeachScritto da: Emilia Cinzia Perri e Silvia VanniEdito da: Bao PublishingAnno: 2024Pagine: 176ISBN: 9788832739732 La trama di Sylvia Beach di Emilia Cinzia Perri e Silvia Vanni La sceneggiatrice Emilia Cinzia Perri e la disegnatrice Silvia Vanni raccontano, per la prima volta in forma di fumetto, la storia di quella…

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#2024 #BAO Publishing #comics #fiction #fumetti gay #fumetto #graphic novel #Italia #LGBT #LGBTQ #libri gay #Shakespeare and Company #Silvia Vanni #Sylvia Beach #Sylvia Beach Emilia Cinzia Perri