SOURCE: Flanner, Janet. “The Great Amateur Publisher.” In Sylvia Beach (1887-1962), pp. 46-51. Paris: Mercvre de France, 1963.

In the following essay, Flanner examines Beach's contributions as a publisher as well as her own acquaintance with Beach as she worked to publish Ulysses.

In the evolution of literature the book publisher has undeniably been the second main essential. Yet individually he has rarely been famed as this necessary major element connected with the appearance of a new great book or even much thanked by its readers. He has been literature's common carrier, like a donkey, with the authors and occasionally their weight of genius loaded on his back. As the original publisher of Ulysses, the late Miss Sylvia Beach escaped one or two of these constrictive categories. She became famous for having published only this one enormous magna opus of James Joyce, so difficult to read and fathom that...