A review by lindseysparks
Shakespeare and Company by James Laughlin, Sylvia Beach

4.0

I've read so many things about Shakespeare and Company and it was wonderful to finally go there (sort of - it's not the same location), and then to read this book written by the founder, Sylvia Beach. It was nice to get her perspective and read her stories about starting the bookstore, all the writers who came to visit, her adventure publishing Ulysses and WWII. She focuses quite heavily on James Joyce and all of the help she gave him, not just in publishing Ulysses but in supporting his family so he could write. I don't know if he appreciated her enough. I've always wanted to own a bookstore, so I also loved her stories about starting out. There wasn't a lot of detail about WWII, but it's just so sad that she had to close because she didn't want to have to sell to Nazis, and that she ended up in a concentration camp for a little while. She survived, but never re-opened the store. (The one open now was opened later by someone else.) I would love to travel back in time and visit her store in the 20s.