[ top ]

Note: In November 1926, Sylvia appears to be in New York dealing with the Samuel Roth pirating-of -Ulysses-business, while Holly is minding the shop in Paris. Mrs Beach, their mother, is meanwhile travelling between Florence and Rome where she is greeted by the hotelier with ‘bursts of joy’ (p.113.)

[ top ]

At some time in the 1950s, Sylvia Beach compiled “The Library of Shakespeare & Company / Sylvia Beach / Paris - VI” (53pp.), together with another of “Memorabilia from the Shakespeare & Company Bookshop, 12, Rue de l’Odéon - Paris -VI” (1pp.)

Two years after her death in 1962, the contents of her apartment were bought by Princeton University from her sister Holly Beach Dennis. In late March of 1964 Howard C. Rice, the Associate librarian for Special Collections, travelled to Paris and spent three weeks in the rooms over her famous bookshop at 12, rue de l’Odéon [err. l’Oléon]. Maurice Saillet, who had been a close associate of Beach’s since the 1930, acted as his guide to the contents of her premises.

Beach had already given away her library to the American Library in Paris but what remained amounted to 8-10,000 volumes. Of these many were presented to the Institut d’Etudes Anglaises et Nord-Américaines of the University of Paris for student use. (The Bibliothèque du Monde Anglophone has now succeeded that body -online]). Some other were sold to the the antiquarian bookseller André Jammes.

Those books and papers which properly constituted Sylvia Beach’s library - in the shape of inscribed books and photographs, literary and business correspondence and related papers, paintings, and memorabilia - naturally went to the purchasing institution in America. At his death, Saillet’s collection of Sylvia Beach and Shakespeare & Company was sold to the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas, where it forms part of the Carlton Lake Collection.

The website tells the story of Shakespeare and Company and something of Sylvia Beach's life - including an account of the publication of Ulysses and her association with other writers, ending with these comments:

[...] Ma che fine ha fatto questo luogo magico e ricco di storia letteraria del Novecento? Arrivò la guerra e la Francia fu invasa dai nazisti. Sylvia, contrariamente a molti dei suoi compatrioti, decise di rimanere a Parigi. Dopo una strenue resistenza fu costretta a chiudere la libreria (il 14 giugno 1940) e nascondere tutti i libri per il timore che le venissero requisiti e distrutti. Dopo il 1945 niente era più come prima: la città e la coscienza del mondo erano stati sconvolti dagli orrori della guerra. Shakespeare and Company non riaprì più. Nel 1951 l’americano George Whitman aprì in 37 rue de la Bûcherie, vicino Place Saint-Michel e a pochi passi dalla Senna, “Le Mistral”, una libreria di libri in lingua inglese. 

It also contains the familiar photograph of Shakespeare and Company - to which is attached a note indicating that the identity of the man in the background (sfondo) behind Joyce is the proprietor’s brother [sic] Cyprian Beach: