There are some great stories associated with the “booklegging” of “Ulysses” that I had fun in recounting - one of which involves the help of a very young journalist named Ernest Hemingway! wanted to read the novel, Sylva had to devise ways of smuggling it over the border. Because American readers living in the U.S. laws did not affect Sylvia in Paris, which is why she was able to publish James Joyce’s “Ulysses” from France even after it had been banned in the U.S.

laws affect Sylvia’s store in Paris?Ī: To the best of my knowledge, U.S. She was a writer, publisher, translator and consummate literary hostess - not to mention quite the gourmet! Her store was the premier meeting place of the bohemian intellectuals in Paris. Adrienne was one of the first female bookstore owners in France. She also inspired Sylvia to open Shakespeare and Company with her French language bookstore and lending library, La Maison des Amis des Livres. Sylvia maintained a profound admiration for Joyce’s genius throughout her life.Ī: Adrienne was Sylvia’s romantic partner for the better part of two decades and a lifelong friend. They bonded together against censorship in the publication of “Ulysses.” Money and business unsettled the relationship and made it difficult for them to see eye to eye. They played word games in the store and at cafés.

Q: What kind of relationship did Sylvia Beach and James Joyce have?Ī: Sylvia and James Joyce had a deep friendship based on a mutual love of language, literature and, of course, Paris. Not only was Sylvia’s store a place where they could find books in their native tongue, they found each other there - like-minded readers, writers and wanderers - determined not to be lost, determined to remake the world from the ashes of the first world war, on their own progressive terms. Shakespeare and Company was the home away from home of those expats. Ever since then, it’s been used to describe the Americans who expatriated to Europe, particularly Paris, in the years after the horrors of the so-called Great War. Q: Who were the members of the Lost Generation, and why was the bookstore important to them?Ī: The label “Lost Generation” was made famous in the epigraph to Ernest Hemingway’s novel “The Sun Also Rises,” though his once mentor Gertrude Stein originally coined the term.

Sylvia beach and ernest hemingway