born on April 26, 1892 in Paris, France
died on June 19, 1955 in Paris, France
French writer and publisher
70th anniversary of her death on June 19, 2025
Biography
When Sylvia Beach opened Shakespeare and Company in November 1919, a bookstore soon to become famous far beyond the borders of Paris, it was the second literary meeting place to be located in the neighborhood known as “Odéonia.” The writer and publisher Adrienne Monnier had opened her bookshop, Maison des Amis des Livres, at 7 rue de
l'Odéon in 1915.
Monnier was for contemporary French literature what Beach was for English literature. Commenting on her first encounter with the woman who was to become her life-long partner, Sylvia said: “Adrienne was descended from mountain people who were probably accustomed to shouting greetings to each other from peak to peak – she had a loud voice.” The two women came to share a great friendship and love that lasted until Monnier's death 38 years later.
Adrienne’s mother, who came from mountainous Savoy, had introduced Adrienne to authors such as Emerson, Novalis, as well as to Lao-Tse at an early age. Adrienne Monnier remembered first coming into contact with contemporary French literature at the age of ten when she discovered an old edition of Mercure de France at one of the iconic stalls full of used and antiquarian books that the bouquinistes set up along the banks of the Seine.
Over the course of her life, she published three literary magazines that presented the work of the most important contemporary French authors: Jules Romain, Jean Cocteau, André Breton, André Gide and Paul Valéry. She organized readings in her bookshop, and the publication of James Joyce's Ulysses in French was certainly one of her greatest publishing achievements.
She also published her own work which included literary portraits of a high quality. In addition, she wrote poems and prose texts under the pseudonym Sollier; some of these were translated into German by Walter Benjamin, who was a friend of hers.
Her bookshop was a meeting place for the literary avant-garde until she was forced to close it in 1951 due to severe rheumatism. She was plagued by a disease of the inner ear that caused her to hear loud noises, led to balance problems and almost robbed her of her mind in the end. She finally took her own life with an overdose of sleeping pills.
(Text from 1992; translated with DeepL.com; edited by Ramona Fararo, 2025.
Please consult the German version for additional information, pictures, sources, videos, and bibliography.)
Quotes
My passions were Adrienne Monnier, James Joyce and Shakespeare and Company.
(Sylvia Beach)
I hope that one day Adrienne's biography will be written, because she was one of the most fascinating figures in literary life in the first half of the 20th century. (Gisèle Freund)
I saw in front of me a girl with a round, rosy face, with blue eyes, with blond hair, who, it appeared all at once, had just entered the service of literature as others decide to enter the service of religion. (Jules Romains)
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