Becca Anderson, author of The Book of Awesome Women Writers, has written a new blog post on Sylvia Beach and her famous bookshop, take a look!
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American Sylvia Beach was captivated by Paris the first time she saw it in the early 1900s. but it wasn’t until after World War I, in 1919, that she established her soon-to-be-famous bookshop, Shakespeare and Company, which specialized in American and English books. Quickly it became a haven for American expatriates, including Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein, “the” spot for American tourists to visit, and a place where European scholars became more familiar with American and English literature. In 1922, Beach became a publisher as well, printing James Joyce’s Ulysses after it had been rejected by a myriad of publishers for being obscene. In 1941, she shut down the store in order to avoid takeover by the Nazis during World War II, and it was never opened again. If you ever travel through Newport, Oregon, stop in at the Sylvia Beach Hotel, named for this great literary patron. It offers three categories of rooms—Bestsellers, Novels, and Classics—each named for a famous writer (Agatha Christie, Herman Melville, and Edgar Allen Poe, to mention just three) and containing a complete set of books by that author. The hotel can be reached at (541) 265-5428 or online: sylviabeachhotel.com.
“Fitting people with books is about as difficult as fitting them with shoes.”
Sylvia Beach
The Book of awesome women writers
Medieval Mystics, Pioneering Poets, Fierce Feminists and First Ladies of Literature (Feminist Book, Gift for Women, Gift for Writers)
This one-of-a-kind tome takes a tour with Sylvia Beach and other booksellers as well as librarians, editors, writers, bibliophiles, and celebrated book clubs. Join women’s studies scholar Anders as she takes you on a ribald ride through the pages of history. Chapter titles include “Prolific Pens” (including Joyce Carol Oates, author of over 100 books), “Mystics, Memoirists and Madwomen”, “Salons and Neosalons”, “Ink in Their Veins” (literary dynasties), and the titillating “Banned, Blacklisted, and Arrested.”