[2] Sylvia Beach, an American expatriate from New Jersey,[3] established Shakespeare and Company on 19 November 1919, at 8 rue Dupuytren.
Writers and artists of the Lost Generation, such as Ernest Hemingway[6] and F. Scott Fitzgerald, as well as Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, George Antheil, Djuna Barnes, Mina Loy, and Man Ray, among others, spent a great deal of time there.
Patrons could buy or borrow books like D. H. Lawrence's controversial Lady Chatterley's Lover, which had been banned in Britain and the United States.
[10] At her bookstore, historic figures made rare appearances, readings of their work: Paul Valery, Andre Gide, and T.S.
[2] It has been suggested that it may have been ordered to shut because Beach denied a German officer the last copy of Joyce's Finnegans Wake.