Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation: A History of Literary Paris in the Twenties and Thirties

Nice book for the serious researcher/reader of Literary Paris before and after WW2.

As a former English teacher, and person who lived in France, and one with a degree in English, I was fascinated by the book, and it's historical, literary, and heroic details. Sylvia Beach was a remarkabled woman--organized the "LOst Generation" and opened the most fascinating bookstore in the world.Would be most interesting and intriguing for people with an academic interest in James Joyce, Paris of the 20s and 30s, Ernest Hemingway, and other vital writers of the era. If you read this book, accompany your reading with Hemingway's A Moveable Feast and The Sun Also Rises. And try as hard as you can to read Ulysses, perhaps even in an abridged edition.I know; I know; it sounds like homework, and it is, but if you have such an interest, do it.

Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation This is an ambitious and serious work, accessible in style, and packed with information in over four hundred pages. It has three main themes, clearly defined in the introduction. The first is the love between Adrienne Monnier and Sylvia. The details of this, so we are told, 'were and are still little known' in 1983 when this book was first published. The second is her admiration for, and championship of, James Joyce. The third is her bookshop, Shakespeare and Company, which was a key feature of the literary scene in Paris between the two World Wars. By far the most detail is provided on her professional relationship with Joyce. Her efforts to get Ulysses published and smuggled into America, her financial and personal efforts to support the author, and the amount of time and energy she invested, are the key theme of the book. Naturally Sylvia knew all the other familiar literary figures of the time. Hemingway and Pound are frequently mentioned, as is Gertrude Stein. As intimated in the introduction there is less to be said about more personal relationships. In a way this seems rather a pity. The anecdotal style and recurring references to various incidents along the way give the writing a rather disjointed feel. Inevitably there is also a certain sense of déja vu particularly for anyone familiar with biographies of Hemingway for example. The strength and the weakness of the book is the amount of text devoted to James Joyce. Joyce attracts great, but not universal, enthusiasm. The man himself seems to have had more arrogance than charm. Depending on the side of this divide which the reader favours this book will firmly hold the attention or will, in places, rather pall.

Written in a style that actually complements its subject matter. Puts Ms. Beach’s own memoirs into broader context. Absolutely engrossing.

Sylvia Beach knew everyone who was anyone in the Paris in which she lived. She was the publisher of James Joyce's "Ulysses", and was his financial savior at the expense of her own economic needs. ON PBS, I saw a documentary about her, and immediately bought this book. It does not disappoint. The author writes with an ability to explain the atmosphere of the period, the mores extant, and the incredible number of famous people who inhabited this world.Among the famous characters in her world (and all realistically portrayed) were Hemingway and his women, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, T. S. Eliot, etc. Stephen Spender and William Butler Yeats gave readings in her book store. Basically everyone who was anyone during that time knew Sylvia.One of the unintended consequences of my reading this book was that I found James Joyce to be a real jerk. Basically, he was not a nice man; he was an awful combination of arrogance and humility, and he seemed to feel he was under appreciated by everyone, even his greatest acolyte, Sylvia Beach.This is definitely a must read for anyone who is interested in this period - it's one of the best I've read. Sylvia Beach lived a life that many women of that period could only dream of, and the author has captured her life and her milieu beautifully. The book is also excellently indexed, and has informative notes. My only (selfish) complaint is that I wish there were more photographs (16 pages weren't enough for me).I highly recommend this biography.

I enjoyed this. An easy read, page by page, but lots and lots of material, lots and lots about how the various characters actually lived. How they dressed, what they ate, where they lived, where they went on vacation. You can take a long time reading this. I have one complaint which is that I tired quickly of how Sylvia continually acceded to Joyce's constant demands for money, much of which he spent on a lavish lifestyle, as well as the almost daily demands from her for what amounted to secretarial support. Well, if that's the way it was that's the way it was, one might say. But there's also the continual insistence that she was a strong, independent woman. If so, why did she knuckle under to this parasite? I don't know. At any rate, though this detracted from my enjoyment of the book I still think it gets five stars for its exquisite recitation of so much else. It is, after all, the story of a very interesting period and if you don't like the central character you (that is I) need to get over it.

In a little corner of Paris, you can find the place where American authors gathered; European authors published; and artists from all stripes gathered. This immersive book takes you back to Paris and introduces you to one woman who made it her mission in life to publish what many book publishers wouldn't and stand behind authors who were to become some of our greatest.

On this subject matter, consider also “The Most Dangerous Book”

As Noel Riley Fitch states in the introduction to her biography of Sylvia Beach, her subject's self-proclaimed loves were "Adrienne Monnier, James Joyce and Shakespeare and Company" and this book tells the story of those three loves. Adrienne Monnier was the woman Sylvia Beach first met in 1917 when she came to Adrienne's bookshop on the Left Bank, and with whom Sylvia spent the next 38 years until Adrienne's death in 1955; James Joyce was the author Sylvia she first met in 1920, whose 'genius' she recognized and whose novel 'Ulysses' she printed when no other publisher would; Shakespeare and Company is the famous bookshop and lending library she opened in 1919, a literary centre where the American, English and French literati congregated, and which she managed to keep running (despite a lack of funds and Joyce's constant demands on her) until 1942 when she was forced to close after a Nazi officer threatened to confiscate all her stock when she refused to sell him her own copy of Joyce's 'Finnegan's Wake'.Noel Riley Fitch has certainly researched her subject well and although - as in Sylvia Beach's life - James Joyce (who was dubbed by the writer and critic, Leon Edel, as "the most incredible literary leech of all time") more or less takes centre stage in this biography, this book is filled with with characters who lived and worked in Paris in the 1920s and '30s including: Ernest Hemingway; F. Scott Fitzgerald; Gertrude Stein; T.S. Eliot; Leon Edel; Ezra Pound, Samuel Beckett, Paul Valéry and Andre Gide, amongst others, and provides the reader with an entertaining account of Literary Paris in the golden age between the wars. An informative, interesting and richly detailed biography and one I would recommend.4 Stars.

The romance of this time is perfectly captured in this impressively detailed book. Beach comes across very well,Joyce as very annoying and selfish, Hemingway- well " what became of him ,fame became him". The poet Valery -sounds very interesting as do many of the artists who inhabited this snapshot in time. To go back for a week would be very interesting.

I liked this book very much, for someone who loves books, especially artistic biographys. This is an interesting book. About Sylvia Beech and her artistic friends and Shakspere and Company.P

Fitch's book provides a wonderful and detailed account of Sylvia Beach's role in promoting literature during the 1920s - 1939 period providing a wonderful insight into not only the period but the main characters of the day. A great deal of the book involves the publication of Joyce's 'Ulysses' by Beach as well as ups and downs with running S&Co. A must read for anyone interested in that period.

What an inspirational woman ✨✨. She is the real star ⭐️