Rediscovering the Lost Generation: Inside the World of Shakespeare and Company

This recording is presented in partnership by the Princeton Public Library, the Shakespeare and Company Project and the Historical Society of Princeton. Joshua Kotin, director of the Shakespeare and Company Project, and Keri Walsh, editor of "The Letters of Sylvia Beach," discuss the Lost Generation and the books they loved. The Shakespeare and Company Project is a digital humanities initiative that brings the world of Shakespeare and Company to life. In 1919, an American named Sylvia Beach opened Shakespeare and Company, an English-language bookshop and lending library in Paris. Almost immediately, it became the home away from home for a community of expatriate writers and artists now known as the Lost Generation. In 1922, she published James Joyce’s "Ulysses" under the Shakespeare and Company imprint, a feat that made her — and her bookshop and lending library — famous around the world. In the 1930s, she catered increasingly to French intellectuals, supplying English-language books and magazines from the recently rediscovered "Moby-Dick" to the latest issues of The New Yorker. In 1941, she preemptively closed Shakespeare and Company after refusing to sell her last copy of Joyce's "Finnegans Wake" to a Nazi officer. This event was recorded on November 18, 2020.