Tuesday 19 June 2012

Shakespeare and Company Bookshop, Paris


Lowry and Jan regularly visited Sylvia Beach's bookshop Shakespeare and Company while they were living in Paris in 1934. (Gordon Bowker Pursued By Furies Pg. 175). A letter that Lowry wrote to Sylvia Beach in June 1934 has survived in which Lowry apologises for not paying for a book. (Collected Letters Volume 1 Letter 63).


The Shakespeare and Company bookshop was located at 12 rue de l'Odéon. Shakespeare and Company gained considerable fame after it published James Joyce's Ulysses in 1922, as a result of Joyce's inability to get an edition out in English-speaking countries.


Lowry turned down an opportunity to meet Joyce when he saw a poster in the bookshop claiming Joyce would be at a meeting of Les Amis de 1914 to be held on 23rd February 1934. Lowry believed the claim on the poster to be "unfounded and prepostrous." ( Jan Gabrial Inside The Volcano Pg. 55).


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