Sylvia Beach and James Joyce
John Rodker, James Joyce, Sylvia Beach, and Cyprian Beach at Shakespeare & Co., 1921.
James Joyce and Sylvia Beach outside Shakespeare and Company at 8 Rue Dupuytren, its first premises. In 1921 the shop moved to 12 Rue de l’Odeon. Shakespeare and Co. published the first edition of Ulysses in 1922, and Beach was a loyal supporter and friend of Joyce for many years.
In 1926, Samuel Roth, a publisher of erotica, began to print unauthorized excerpts from Ulysses in his magazine, Two Worlds Monthly. After Shakespeare and Company published a new edition of Ulysses in 1927, Roth made plans to publish a pirated version of Ulysses in book form. This edition, printed by Adolph and Rudolph Loewinger in New York in 1929, was highly corrupt. For example, on the first page, one reads that Buck Mulligan “pointed his finger in friendly jest and went over the parapet”, rather than simply going “over to the parapet”.


