SOURCE: Fitch, Noel Riley. “Sylvia Beach: Commerce, Sanctification, and Art on the Left Bank.” In A Living of Words: American Women in Print Culture, edited by Susan Albertine, pp. 189-206. Knoxville, Tenn.: The University of Tennessee Press, 1995.

In the following essay, Fitch outlines the importance of Beach's bookshop, detailing its business operations and reflecting on its significance as a meeting place for American writers in Paris during those years.

Sylvia Beach fled the Presbyterian parsonage of Princeton, New Jersey, to create a life for herself abroad. After working in journalism, volunteer farming during World War I, and the Red Cross in Serbia, Beach founded a bookselling and lending business called Shakespeare and Company on the Left Bank of Paris. Through this business she was able to support herself both vocationally and avocationally, for she was an avid reader. By applying the missionary zeal of her ancestors to a...