Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein and the American Library in Paris
(edited from a ‘Detailed History’ by American Library in Paris staff)
In the closing years of World War I, 1917-1918, hundreds of American libraries, under an initiative of the American Library Association (ALA), launched the Library War Service, a project to send books to the doughboys fighting in the trenches. By the Armistice, nearly a million and a half books had been shipped to Europe.
The American Library in Paris was founded in 1920 by the ALA with a core collection of those wartime books and a motto about the spirit of its creation: Atrum post bellum, ex libris lux: After the darkness of war, the light of books. The library’s charter promised to bring the best of American literature and culture, and library science, to readers in France. It soon found an imposing home at 10, rue de l’Elysée, the palatial former residence of the Papal Nuncio.
The leadership of the early Library was composed of a small group of American expatriates, notably Charles Seeger, father of the young American poet Alan Seeger ("I have a rendezvous with Death"), who died in the war, and great-uncle of folk singer Pete Seeger. Expatriate American author Edith Wharton was among the first trustees of the Library.
Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein, early patrons of the Library, contributed articles to the Library’s periodical, Ex Libris, established in 1923 and which is still published today as a newsletter. In a letter dated January 28, 1925 from Schruns, Austria, Hemingway writes to his Upper Michigan friend, Bill Smith, about a possible secretarial position with Dr. W. Dawson Johnston, Director of the American Library in Paris to help get Ex Libris and a book column Johnston wrote for the Paris Tribune out each month. Smith did come to Paris that spring and stayed until September but never worked at the Library
Thornton Wilder and Archibald MacLeish borrowed books from the American Library. Stephen Vincent Benét wrote "John Brown’s Body" (1928) at the Library. Sylvia Beach donated books from her lending library when she closed Shakespeare & Co. in 1941.
The Library’s continuing role as a bridge between the United States and France was apparent from the beginning. The French president, Raymond Poincaré, and with French military leaders including Joffre, Foch, and Lyautey, were present when the Library was formally inaugurated. An early chairman of the board was Clara Longworth de Chambrun, member of a prominent Cincinnati family and sister of the U.S. Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nicholas Longworth.
A succession of talented American librarians directed the Library through the difficult years of the Depression, when the first evening author programs drew such French literary luminaries as André Gide, André Maurois, Princess Bonaparte, and Colette for readings. Financial difficulties ultimately drove the Library to new premises on the rue de Téhéran in 1936.
With the coming of World War II, the occupation of France by the Nazi regime, and the deepening threats to French Jews, Library director Dorothy Reeder and her staff and volunteers provided heroic service by operating an underground, and potentially dangerous, book-lending service to Jewish members barred from libraries. Dorothy Reeder reminded staff and patrons that The American Library in Paris was a “war baby, born out of that vast number of books sent to the A. E. F. (American Expeditionary Force) by the American Library Association in the last war. When hostilities ceased, it embarked on a new mission, and has served as a memorial to the American soldiers for whom it has been established.”
When Reeder was sent home for her safety, Countess de Chambrun rose to the occasion to lead the Library. In a classic Occupation paradox, the happenstance of her son’s marriage to the daughter of the Vichy prime minister, Pierre Laval, ensured the Library a friend in high places, and a near-exclusive right to keep its doors open and its collections largely uncensored throughout the war. A French diplomat later said the Library had been to occupied Paris "an open window on the free world."
The Library prospered again in the postwar era as the United States took on a new role in the world, the expatriate community in Paris experienced regeneration, and a new wave of American writers came to Paris - and to the Library. Irwin Shaw, James Jones, Mary McCarthy, Art Buchwald, Richard Wright, and Samuel Beckett were active members during a heady period of growth and expansion. During these early Cold War years, American government funds made possible the establishment of a dozen provincial branches of the American Library in Paris, even one in the Latin Quarter. The Library moved to the Champs-Elysées in 1952. It was at that address that Director Ian Forbes Fraser barred the door to a high-profile visit from Roy Cohn and David Schine, Senator Joseph McCarthy’s notorious staff members, who were touring Europe in search of "red" books in American libraries.
The Library purchased its current premises, two blocks from the Seine and two blocks from the Eiffel Tower, in 1965 - making way on the Champs Elysées for the Publicis monument, Le Drugstore. On the rue du Général Camou, the Library helped to nurture the growth of the American College of Paris’s fledgling library. Today, as part of the American University in Paris, that library is our neighbor and tenant. The branch libraries ended their connections to the American Library in Paris in the 1990s; three survive under new local partnerships.
By the time of its 75th anniversary, in 1995, the Library’s membership had grown to 2,000. The premises were renovated in the late 1990s, and are undergoing regular updates. In 2009, the reading room was expanded and new audio-visual equipment was installed for programming. The American Library in Paris remains the largest English-language lending library on the European continent.
This article was orignally published in the Hemingway Foundation Spring 2014 Dispatch