Shakespeare and Company

1959. First Edition. Signed. BEACH, Sylvia. Shakespeare and Company. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1959. Octavo, original ivory cloth, original dust jacket. Housed in a custom clamshell box. $8000.First edition of Sylvia Beach's memoir, ""particularly valuable for the many insights into Joyce's work and the authentic personal views it provides of the man himself"" (New York Times), signed on the half title by Sylvia Beach, in original dust jacket.It was in Sylvia Beach's legendary Paris bookshop, Shakespeare and Company, that ""James Joyce's Ulysses was born."" In her memoir, Shakespeare and Company, Beach tells her story ""with simplicity, freshness and modesty. And in doing so she succeeds in bringing back that whole small—but intensely creative—world around her bookshop and that of her friend, Adrienne Monnier… which was the center of so much French literary activity."" Her book ""is particularly valuable for the many critical insights into Joyce's work and the authentic personal views it provides of the man himself."" After her publication of Ulysses ""on Joyce's birthday, Feb. 2, 1922, Shakespeare and Company was known to writers the world over. No one failed to call… but it is finally Joyce whose portrait remains—a shy, quiet, infinitely curious, kindly, generous man… She shows us the artist whose complex existence was given to his work… As Beach says, 'He treated people invariably as his equals'"" (New York Times). An excerpt, Ulysses in Paris, was printed in 1956 for private distribution to friends of the author and publisher. Contemporary owner gift inscription.Book with interior fine and only slightest toning and couple spots of foxing to spine, dust jacket with only light wear to extremities. A near-fine signed copy.