Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
James Joyce
-
Standard Name: Joyce, James
Irish exile JJ
, hailed by Yeats
as a new kind of novelist even before his first novel was published, became one of the leading practitioners of modernism. As well as poems, a play, and a volume of short stories, he produced three important novels, from the last of which he put out several separate sections long before the whole appeared. Joyce encountered obstacles to publishing almost all his books, raised by censors both official and self-appointed. Without the tireless patronage of Harriet Shaw Weaver
and Sylvia Beach
, his last two books might never have been published at all.
Reviewing the collection, Kathryn Hughes
found SB
's usual style characterised by a kind of polite chirpiness, with even faintly slangy expressions—jazzed up, my stars, corking—marked by scare quotes, and Beach's...
Family and Intimate relationships
Sylvia Beach
SB
was hunting down a copy of Paul Fort
's Vers et prose, and was directed to Monnier's bookshop. She found the shop's owner surprisingly warm and friendly. Adrienne declared that she like[d] America...
Occupation
Sylvia Beach
This was the first American bookstore in Paris. It became a focal point of French and American literary activities. In the summer of 1921 the bookstore moved to 12 rue de l'Odéon.
Beach, Sylvia. Shakespeare and Company. Harcourt, Brace.
60
For...
Wealth and Poverty
Sylvia Beach
Eleanor Beach
fully supported her daughter's dream of owning a bookstore. She worked with her broker to get SB
the necessary $3,000 (24,810 francs) in August 1919 in order to start the business.
Fitch, Noel Riley. Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation: A History of Literary Paris in the Twenties and Thirties. W. W. Norton.
Joyce
was having trouble getting his latest work, Ulysses, published because of the public outcry against it and the obscenity laws that penalized both the printer and the publisher of material deemed obscene. Harriet Weaver
Friends, Associates
Sylvia Beach
Beach and Joyce
had a bet to see whether Bernard Shaw
would purchase a copy of Ulysses. Beach lost when Shaw wrote to say that she knew little of [his] countrymen if she thought...
Occupation
Sylvia Beach
Harassed by customers and friends for their copies, SB
withdrew the window-copy until shipments arrived from the publisher
in Dijon. She and her assistant mailed out the books to subscribers in the United States...
Occupation
Sylvia Beach
Joyce
wanted a simple, cheap-looking booklet, so Herbert Clarke
produced something that looked, even Clarke himself thought, regrettably pharmaceutical.
Beach, Sylvia. Shakespeare and Company. Harcourt, Brace.
174
Clarke persuaded Beach to put out a better version with boards, but this would...
Occupation
Sylvia Beach
Joyce
was launching a lawsuit against Samuel Roth
at this time for illegally pirating Ulysses in the United States. He stated in a deposition against Roth that the book was not his property but...
Wealth and Poverty
Sylvia Beach
Ironically, SB
was by then doing considerably better financially and physically without the entanglements of Joyce
's affairs and the business with Ulysses.
Fitch, Noel Riley. Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation: A History of Literary Paris in the Twenties and Thirties. W. W. Norton.
329-30
Occupation
Sylvia Beach
SB
offered to publish James Joyce
's Ulysses, a proposition he gratefully accepted.
Beach, Sylvia. Shakespeare and Company. Harcourt, Brace.
47
Leisure and Society
Sylvia Beach
Hemingway
was scheduled to read alone but was frightfully anxious, so he asked Stephen Spender
, whom he had met in Spain, to come along and read too. Hemingway was still nervous on the...
Occupation
Sylvia Beach
SB
handed James Joyce
the first copy of Ulysses on his fortieth birthday; she placed the second copy in the window of Shakespeare and Company
.
Beach, Sylvia. Shakespeare and Company. Harcourt, Brace.
84
Health
Sylvia Beach
SB
had suffered from health problems all her life, but as the responsibilities of owning a bookstore and publishing Ulysses grew, her migraines increased in length and intensity. The headaches began in her pre-teen years...
Textual Production
Samuel Beckett
A critical essay on James Joyce
, included in Our Exagmination Round his Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress, was SB
's first adult published work.
Federman, Raymond, and John Fletcher. Samuel Beckett. University of California Press.
