Only 15,000 Americans had visited France annually before the war. Between 19, the franc lost nearly two-thirds of its value against the dollar, and Paris’s affordability made its charms irresistible. The booming American and British economies and the plummeting franc made Paris the perfect cosmopolis. Young men and women who never thought of leaving their hometowns found themselves serving in allied or enemy countries and imagining cosmopolitan lives. The First World War had created a generation of transnationalists. He applied his expertise to a cigarette box from Sarajevo and a wobbly chair. Shortly after Ezra Pound moved to Paris in 1920 (England had become too docile, he complained), he sauntered into Shakespeare and Company, surveyed the premises and asked Miss Beach if there was anything he could fix for her. English and American writers weren’t far behind. Adrienne Monnier helped spread the word, and members of the French literati came immediately, including André Gide, Georges Duhamel, Jules Romains and Valery Larbaud, all prominent French writers. The signboard was a painting of the bard. On a Monday morning in November 1919, Sylvia Beach hung a small wooden sign above her door and opened the shutters to Shakespeare and Company.
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