SOURCE: Fitch, Noel. “Sylvia Beach's Shakespeare and Company: Port of Call for American Expatriates.” Research Studies 33 (1965): 197-207.

In the following essay, Fitch describes the importance of Sylvia's bookshop, which spanned 22 years between two world wars, and how it enriched the art and writers of three nations.

On the Left Bank of the Seine in a bookish neighborhood in the oldest part of Paris, a book lover or a James Joyce admirer of the 1920's and 1930's could find Sylvia Beach's bookshop, Shakespeare and Company. He could either cross the Luxembourg Gardens from Montparnasse or walk the three blocks west from the Sorbonne to the rue de l'Odéon. This narrow little street was headed by the Théâtre de l'Odéon, which reminded Sylvia Beach of the colonial houses of Princeton, her home town. Halfway between the Boulevard St. Germain and the theatre, on the right hand side...