SOURCE: Dennison, Sally. “James Joyce: From the Bookshop.” In [Alternative] Literary Publishing: Five Modern Histories, pp. 78-115. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1984.

In the following excerpt, Dennison characterizes Beach's undertaking with Joyce as one of the most famous cases of alternative publishing, in which Beach's unusual allowances and relationship with Joyce allowed him the freedom to be even more experimental than he could have been had he worked with a traditional publisher.

The most famous case of this form of alternative publishing in modern times involves one of the most influential English-language novels of our century, James Joyce's Ulysses. In April 1921, when Joyce's book had been rejected repeatedly by publishers and printers in the United States and England, his bookseller friend Sylvia Beach agreed to publish it for him in Paris through her little Left Bank bookshop, Shakespeare and Company.

This arrangement would make Sylvia Beach something...