Sylvia Beach

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An American expatriate in Paris, SB played a key role in the emergence of literary modernism. She wrote important translations of landmark works of modernist literature, edited a collection of critical reviews and a retrospective anthology, and wrote a memoir about her life as the owner of the Paris bookshop Shakespeare and Company . Before becoming a bookseller, she had aspirations of becoming a war journalist, but only one of her essays was published.
  • BirthName: Nancy Woodbridge Beach
  • Nickname: Sylvia
Black and white photograph of Sylvia Beach, seated at a desk, with a bookshelf behind her. She is turned, looking off to the side, and she is wearing a plain black dress with a white collar.

Milestones

14 March 1887

Nancy Woodbridge Beach (later SB ) was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the middle daughter of three.
Fitch, Noel Riley. Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation: A History of Literary Paris in the Twenties and Thirties. W. W. Norton, 1983.
21

Later 1916

While in Spain (where she lived during 1914-16), SB wrote and tried to publish in the United States an essay called Spanish Feminism in 1916. She was unsuccessful in placing it.
Fitch, Noel Riley. Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation: A History of Literary Paris in the Twenties and Thirties. W. W. Norton, 1983.
31

6 October 1962

SB was found dead from a heart attack in her apartment in Paris.
Fitch, Noel Riley. Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation: A History of Literary Paris in the Twenties and Thirties. W. W. Norton, 1983.
414

Biography

Birth and Family

14 March 1887

Nancy Woodbridge Beach (later SB ) was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the middle daughter of three.
Fitch, Noel Riley. Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation: A History of Literary Paris in the Twenties and Thirties. W. W. Norton, 1983.
21

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