Sylvia Beach - Infinite Women

This bio has been republished from Mina Loy: Navigating the Avant-Garde. See below for full attribution.

Born: 14 March 1887, United States
Died: 5 October 1962
Country most active: France
Also known as: NA

Sylvia Beach was born in Princeton, NJ in 1887, relocating to Europe when as a volunteer with the Red Cross during the First World War. After her nursing stint, she was encouraged and monetarily supported by both her mother and her life partner Adrienne Monnier to pursue opening a bookshop in Paris. This bookshop would become Shakespeare and Company, one of the most important literary locales of expatriate Paris. Shakespeare and Company was a haven for writers and the frontrunner for publishing Avant-Garde and experimental writing, as Beach is famous for promoting and publishing the first complete edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses. Writers in the Modernist canon, such as Ernest Hemingway and Ezra Pound, found in Shakespeare and Company not only a literary haven, but often a place to sleep and a community of writers. Not only did Shakespeare and Company attract up-and-coming writers, but the shop also attracted a plethora of intrigued Parisians and plebeians, as the number of library cards in Beach’s possession totaled more than 500 (Kotin).
In addition to owning and running the “bookshop and lending library, Shakespeare and Company,” Beach spent her time advocating and networking for the writers and friends that were loyal to her shop (Burke 329). In turn, her literary network was massive. Although Beach’s shop shut its doors in 1941 due to the Nazi invasion of Paris, Shakespeare and Company still holds quite a legacy. A man by the name of David Whitman bought the shop and since 1951 has carried on the shop’s literary tradition into contemporary times through its book-lending and sleeping policies: as long as you work two hours in the shop, you will have a place to sleep (Halverson).
In a 1927 petition Beach wrote an essay titled, “Beach’s Letter of Protest Against the Pirating of Ulysses” which calls for the end of piracy of James Joyce’s Ulysses. 165 writers and artists including Loy signed in support of Beach, proving her wide reach in the literary world. Moreover, Loy was held in such high regard by Beach she invited Loy’s written and documented support of Joyce. Furthermore, in a speech Beach pushed for post-war literary freedom, mentioning Loy by name, alongside Hemingway, Williams, and Stein. Among other qualities, Beach admired Loy’s position on censorship and freedom of expression that she promotes in her poetry.
However, Beach might not have taken Loy too seriously as a poet. In her memoir Shakespeare and Company, Beach claims that Loy wrote poetry “when she had time” (Beach 114). According to Loy biographer Carolyn Burke, this flippant mention of Loy in her memoir might suggest Beach’s condescension towards Loy; however, Beach also cared to know the correct spelling of Loy’s collection of poetry (“Baedeker,” not “Baedecker”) when her collections were published and republished in the United States. Furthermore, due to her publishing of Ulysses and close ties to James Joyce, Beach annoyed Gertrude Stein. Nevertheless, “despite her ties to Gertrude, Mina remained on excellent terms with Beach” (Burke 330). While in Paris, Beach and Loy had a close and friendly relationship. Beach speaks very highly of Loy and her children in relation to “the Crowd” of Shakespeare and Company, and when talking about Loy’s eccentric house filled with lampshades, pointing out the fact that Loy sells the shades to support her family (330).