What is Shakespeare and Company's link to Ulysses?
Shakespeare and Company was Sylvia Beach's English-language bookshop and lending library in Paris, at 12 rue de l'Odéon from 1921. It published Ulysses in 1922 and was a home for writers such as Hemingway. A later shop of the same name, opened in 1951, still trades by the Seine.
Edited by Aidan O'Leary · Last updated 30 October 2026
Where it appears
Several episodes. The publisher's note in the first edition.
The publisher asks the reader’s indulgence for typographical errors unavoidable in the exceptional circumstances.
What it means in plain English
Beach offered to publish the book in 1921 after Joyce's troubles finding a printer.
The original shop closed in 1941 during the German occupation.
Literary context
George Whitman's later shop took the name in Beach's honour.
References
- Sylvia Beach, Shakespeare and Company (1959)
- Richard Ellmann, James Joyce (revised edition, 1982)
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Questions readers ask
Is it the same shop today?
No. Today's shop opened in 1951 at a different address.
Related terms
Sylvia Beach
Sylvia Beach was the American bookseller who first published Ulysses, in Paris on 2 February 1922, Joyce's fortieth birthday. Her shop, Shakespeare and Company, took on the book when no publisher in Britain or America would risk it.
The 1922 first edition
Ulysses was first published in Paris on 2 February 1922, Joyce's fortieth birthday, by Sylvia Beach's bookshop Shakespeare and Company. It was printed in Dijon in an edition of 1,000 copies, in a blue cover chosen to match the Greek flag.
The US obscenity trial (1933)
Ulysses was banned in the United States as obscene after episodes appeared in The Little Review. In the 1933 case United States v. One Book Called Ulysses, Judge John Woolsey ruled it was not obscene, and Random House published it legally in 1934.