Sylvia Beach and women’s scholarly communities under Occupation: The diary of Madeleine Blaess

In 1939 Madeleine Blaess, a languages graduate, left her home in England for Paris to begin doctoral research at the Sorbonne. Unable to escape Paris before the German invasion in spring 1940, she was trapped in France for the duration of the war. The letters she wrote to her parents during the Phoney War, and the diary she began in October 1940 and continued until after the Liberation, are a fascinating account of her life as a postgraduate scholar in wartime. Through these written traces we glimpse women-run social and intellectual communities and businesses to which many women students turned for scholarly and moral support and, occasionally, practical and financial succour. This article draws on Madeleine’s letters and diary to describe and evaluate the importance of these extra-curricular networks in supporting women students during wartime with a particular focus on the bookshop and library Shakespeare and Company, run by Sylvia Beach.

Of Bliss and Blushing: Cities and Affect in Katherine Mansfield and Jean Rhys

This paper explores the significance of Katherine Mansfield and Jean Rhys as colonial outsiders in the modernist metropolis of Paris. The paper draws upon a number of ideas from contemporary affect theory (such as work on the idea of shame) to present an original account of how, in texts such as ‘Je ne parle pas français’ and ‘Feuille d’Album’ (Mansfield) and Quartet (Rhys), both writers responded, in differing ways, to the moods of the modernist spaces of the city. It also discusses the importance of their engagement with the cultural institutions of modernism in Paris, such as that of Sylvia Beach’s bookshop, Shakespeare and Company, and explores their shared connections to the French writer Francis Carco.

Serial Encounters

James Joyce’s Ulysses was first published in New York in the Little Review between 1918 and 1920. What kind of reception did it have and how does the serial version of the text differ from the version most readers know, the iconic volume edition published in Paris in 1922 by Shakespeare and Company? Joyce prepared much of Ulysses for serial publication while resident in Zurich between 1915 and 1919. This original study, which is based on sustained archival research, goes behind the scenes in Zurich and New York to recover long-forgotten facts pertinent to the writing, reception, and interpretation of Ulysses. The Little Review serialization of Ulysses proved controversial from the outset and was ultimately stopped before Joyce had completed the work. The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice took successful legal action against the journal’s editors, on the grounds that the final instalment of the thirteenth chapter of Ulysses was obscene. This triumph of the social purity movement had far-reaching repercussions for Joyce’s subsequent publishing history, and for his ongoing efforts in composing Ulysses. After chapters of contextual literary history, the study moves on to consider the textual significance of the serialization. It breaks new ground in Joycean scholarship by paying critical attention to Ulysses as a serial text. It concludes by examining the myriad ways in which Joyce revised and augmented Ulysses while resident in Paris, showing how Joyce made Ulysses more sexually suggestive and overt in explicit response to its legal reception in New York.

Trial and Error

This chapter looks at the compositional genesis of Ulysses, its early production history, and the circumstances by which the editors of the Little Review became embroiled in a trial in New York in February 1921. The composition of Joyce’s text is discussed in detail, from the moments of conception through to April 1921, when Joyce realized that the Little Review serialization would not continue, and made arrangements for the publication of his work in volume form with Sylvia Beach’s Parisian bookshop, Shakespeare and Company. The trial of the Little Review editors—on the grounds of the putative obscenity of the last instalment of chapter 13 (‘Nausicaa’)—is also discussed in detail. In particular the chapter looks at the sexual politics of the trial, including the homophobia of John Quinn, the lawyer who gave significant financial support to both Joyce and the Little Review.

Beach, Sylvia (1887–1962)

Sylvia Beach was an American expatriate best known as the owner of the iconic Parisian Shakespeare and Company bookstore, located at 8 rue Dupuytren until 1921, and then at 12 rue de l’Odéon the Left Bank area of the city. The popular bookstore and lending library was a point of convergence for many modernist writers and artists in Paris’ thriving arts community, including Ernest Hemingway, André Gide, André Maurois, Robert McAlmon, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and James Joyce. A supporter of James Joyce, Beach was the first publisher of Joyce’s Ulysses. Born Nancy Woodbridge Beach, Sylvia Beach spent much of her youth distancing herself from a household made uneasy by the tense marriage of her mother, Eleanor Thomazine Orbison, and father, Sylvester Beach, a Presbyterian minister who served several parishes in New England, including the prominent Princeton, New Jersey community. Beach’s early refusal of material wealth was often at odds with her father’s attempts to gain social status among affluent Princeton parishioners. However, Beach found some hope for her ambition of becoming an independent woman during a year spent in Paris in 1902, during which her father served as Associate Pastor of the American Church of Paris. This period helped develop Beach’s love for Paris, its artists, and its liberal atmosphere.

Shakespeare and Company

Shakespeare and Company is the legendary English-language lending library and bookstore in Paris, which was founded in 1919 by Sylvia Beach (1887–1962). The shop opened at 8 rue Dupuytren but later relocated to 12 rue de l’Odéon in 1921 opposite the shop of Beach’s long-time business and personal partner, Adrienne Monnier (1892–1955). Shakespeare and Company operated until Beach was taken prisoner in 1941 during the German occupation of France; in 1944, Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) participated in liberating the store.