Monnier was wearing a garment that looked like a cross between a peasant's dress and a nun's habit, "with a long full skirt … and a sort of tight-fitting velvet waistcoat over a white silk blouse.

Beach immediately became a member of Monnier's lending library, where she regularly attended readings by authors such as André Gide, Paul Valéry and Jules Romains.

[citation needed] However, Paris rents were much cheaper and the exchange rates favorable, so with Monnier's help, she opened an English language bookstore and lending library that she named Shakespeare and Company.

[1][failed verification] Shakespeare and Company quickly attracted French and American readers, including aspiring writers to whom Beach offered hospitality, encouragement, and books.

In July 1920, Beach met Irish writer James Joyce at a dinner party hosted by French poet André Spire.

[1][failed verification] Shakespeare and Company experienced financial difficulty throughout the Great Depression of the 1930s but remained supported by wealthy friends, including Bryher.

In 1936, when Beach thought she would be forced to close her shop, André Gide organized a group of writers into a club called Friends of Shakespeare and Company.

Following her release she occasionally assisted the American member of the French Resistance, Drue Leyton, in sheltering allied airmen shot down in France.

The book contains first-hand observations of James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Valery Larbaud, Thornton Wilder, André Gide, Leon-Paul Fargue, George Antheil, Robert McAlmon, Gertrude Stein, Stephen Vincent Benét, Aleister Crowley, Harry Crosby, Caresse Crosby, John Quinn, Berenice Abbott, Man Ray, and many others.

[5] American George Whitman opened a new bookshop in 1951 at a different location in Paris (in the rue de la Bûcherie) originally called Le Mistral, but renamed Shakespeare and Company in 1964 in honor of the late Sylvia Beach.