ABSTRACT
For me the truly fascinating chapters of Shakespeare and Company are those in which this publisher describes her most unbusinesslike relations with her author and divinity. Joyce accepted favors and demanded services as if he were not a person but a sanctified cause. It was, he seemed to be saying, a privilege to devote one’s life to the cause, and those who paid his debts for him were sure to be rewarded in heaven. Miss Beach agreed with him. Admiring and almost worshipping his work, she invested all the profits of her bookshop, begged all the money she could from relatives, and mortgaged all her credit in publishing Ulysses. Joyce kept pushing her closer to bankruptcy by making more and more corrections in proof. When the book finally appeared on his fortieth birthday-February 2, 1922-it was a monument to the genius and patience of the author, but also to the self-sacrificing devotion of its publisher….
