At your next visit you might meet Gertrude Stein or Valery Larbaud or Claude Cahun. She notes the title on your lending library card and reminds you to return the book by the end of the week. You bring it to Sylvia, who seems to approve. (You’re relieved that Shakespeare and Company has fantasy novels.) But then you see a thin volume with a colorful cover: Woolf’s Kew Gardens (1919), recently published in a limited edition by Hogarth Press with woodcuts by Vanessa Bell. You also consider, somewhat guiltily, Andrew Soutar’s Equality Island (1919). You consider Ezra Pound’s collection of essays, Pavannes and Divisions (1918), and Upton Sinclair’s muck-racking The Brass Check (1919). It’s out, but Sylvia suggests checking back later in the week. You ask about Virginia Woolf’s recent novel, Night and Day (1919). It was at 12 rue de l’Odon and in the years leading up to World War II, it became a literary haven and a publisher in its own right it was. This bookstore takes its name from an older store which was started in Paris in 1919, by a lady called Sylvia Beach, another US expatriate. You look at recent magazines- The New Republic and The Dial, Poetry and Playboy. It’s Paris’ second Shakespeare and Company bookstore. She also notes your membership and payment in a logbook. Sylvia hands you membership card and creates a lending library card to keep track of your borrowing activities.
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