Noel Riley Fitch is a historian, biographer, and lecturer. She occasionally teaches writing and literature courses for the University of Southern California and the American University in Paris. Her permanent home is in Los Angeles.

"Courageous, hardworking, self-sacrificing, determined, witty, and charming, Sylvia Beach built her famous Shakespeare and Company Bookshop into a veritable hub of international literature, published Joyce's Ulysses, [and] served as cheerful den-mother to hundreds of writers, artists, and composers.... Professor Fitch's richly detailed biography, the product of ten years' research, projects Miss Beach's busy life against the moving background of literary Paris in the golden age between the wars, and stands as an admirable and wonderfully readable achievement in historical biography."

Noel Riley Fitch is a historian, biographer, and lecturer. She occasionally teaches writing and literature courses for the University of Southern California and the American University in Paris. Her permanent home is in Los Angeles.

"Courageous, hardworking, self-sacrificing, determined, witty, and charming, Sylvia Beach built her famous Shakespeare and Company Bookshop into a veritable hub of international literature, published Joyce's Ulysses, [and] served as cheerful den-mother to hundreds of writers, artists, and composers.... Professor Fitch's richly detailed biography, the product of ten years' research, projects Miss Beach's busy life against the moving background of literary Paris in the golden age between the wars, and stands as an admirable and wonderfully readable achievement in historical biography."