Sylvia Beach was intimately acquainted with the expatriate and visiting writers of the Lost
Generation a label that she never accepted. Like moths of great promise they were drawn to
her well-lighted bookstore and warm hearth on the Left Bank. Shakespeare and Company evokes the
zeitgeist of an era through its revealing glimpses of James Joyce Ernest Hemingway Scott
Fitzgerald Sherwood Anderson Andre Gide Ezra Pound Gertrude Stein Alice B. Toklas D. H.
Lawrence and others already famous or soon to be. In his introduction to this new edition
James Laughlin recalls his friendship with Sylvia Beach. Like her bookstore his publishing
house New Directions is considered a cultural touchstone.
