Shakespeare & Co. Bookshop

[Allegra]

If all the actual bookshops cease to exist, this one will stay:

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Once upon a time - a very good time when so many famous or budding writers and artists gathered in Paris from all over the world, an American women Sylvia Beach with limited funds opened this English language Bohemian bookstore on the left bank of Paris, that was in 1919. Soon Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Joyce etc. became the usual guests. Beach also published Ulysses there. The shop was forced to close in 1941 during German occupation. Beach was interned but released later with the help of an American art collector who also got his English wife out of the interment camp by giving Hermann Goring a painting. Long story. Afterwards, Beach never reopened the bookshop, but wrote a memoir about it.

Then in 1951, an American ex-serviceman George Whitman opened a bookstore in nearby area, just a bridge away from Norte Dame, it too became a hot spot for readers and writers. After the death of Sylvia Beach, Whitman renamed the shop Shakespeare and Company in 1964, on Shakespeare's 400th anniversary.

The old bookshop is the coolest and busiest I've seen, packed with readers and tourists. Thanks to its amazing history, tradition and location. It has many small rooms loaded with all sort of books old and new. An evening every week there is a writer-reader event. Two weeks ago when I was there, they had a Canadian writer Heidi Sopinka talking about her debut - The Dictionary of Animal Languages, a fiction. In July Michael Moorcock is scheduled to have a talk there. Admission is free. The bookshop's organic Cafe has the most delicious brownies. It looks like a very attractive homey place for inspiring writers and book lovers. I wish I could spend a whole day in there and lug a sack of books out with me!

 

[AlexH]

Too touristy.

 

[Allegra]

I think most tourists who want to visit that bookshop are book readers, like me. In fact I didn't get to see that evening's event because too many people, young and old, queued outside of the shop. Not only the shop is quaint, bohemian - if the word still comply with our time, and historical, it really has a good cultural, literal vibe. What I've learned, they stick to the tradition of supporting new writers (Whitman used to have tiny beds between and under book shelves for young writers to sleep over in exchange of helping hands in the store, he liked to cook pancakes for them in the morning), many of those events are for them to connect with readers and other writers, chatting about their books and lives, such as this:

I don't know how the activities are organised but for our Chron inspiring authors, if interested why not contact them to get an opportunity, would be fun! The daughter of Whitman is now running the shop after he passed away in his 90s, I think she is based in London.

 

[Vince W]

I've been. It's interesting, but then I love almost any bookshop. As a science fiction fan I was more taken with Librairie Jules Verne, which is very near by.