SOURCE: Beach, Sylvia, and Jackson Mathews. “Conversation with Sylvia Beach & Company.” Kenyon Review 22, no. 1 (winter 1960): 137-50.

In the following interview with Beach, Mathews discusses both her memoir Shakespeare and Company as well as other events and literary personalities that had a connection with Beach's bookshop in Paris.

Shakespeare and Company is a record of the people and their doings that made Miss Beach's bookshop in Paris the literary headquarters of the twenties. Above all, it is a personal record. When you have read it, you will find a sensitive and moving image of James Joyce in your memory. Adrienne Monnier will be there too. And Hemingway. And some others. And then, clearest of all, though she never says much about herself: Sylvia Beach.

She is alive and present in the character of her remarks. The reviews of her book have shown, by quoting so many of them, how...