Shakespeare and Company | The Most Famous Bookstore in Paris

Travel is a long way off for all of us at the moment, but dreaming about the places we want to see is a great way of keeping spirits high while we’re staying home. 

For me, many of those dreams are tied to books and Paris. In the last Literary Destinations post, Five Must See Parisian Cafés for Book Lovers, I focused on cafés with literary histories that were favorites of classic authors such as Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Wilde. 

Today, we’re staying in the literary stronghold of the Left Bank in Paris but instead of hopping around different locations, we’re focusing on the history of one literary landmark that’s famous among book lovers, Shakespeare and Company Bookstore. 

Shakespeare and Company has all the makings of a bookstore worthy of any book lover’s admiration. It’s the quintessential perfect little bookstore—charming, a bit haphazard, and full to bursting with books. Not to be forgotten is that it’s in Paris. I truly don’t think it could get better. 

But it does. 

Because Shakespeare and Company isn’t just a charming little bookstore that popped up in recent years, it’s a bookstore with a rich history that spans a century, three storefronts, and three owners. It’s a store that’s become the most famous bookstore in Paris, one that attracted some of the most famous writers of the early 20th century and became a gathering place for the literary inclined of Paris for decades.

The story of Shakespeare and Company begins with its founder, Sylvia Beach. The daughter of an American minister, Sylvia had traveled to Europe from New Jersey several times, including Paris and living in Spain for two years where she worked for the Red Cross, before she decided to follow her interest in contemporary French writing and move permanently to Paris in 1917. It was a fateful day indeed when, while researching at the Bibliothèque Nationale, Sylvia read of a little Parisian bookstore, La Maison des Amis des Livres, that also served as a lending library. At the bookstore, Sylvia met Adrienne Monnier, owner of La Maison des Amis Livres and one of the first women in Paris to own her own bookstore. The women became romantic and business partners and lived together for almost four decades. In the early days of their relationship, Sylvia was inspired by the literary culture of the Left Bank and by Adrienne’s work to promote innovative, modernist writing. When financial inability prevented her from opening a branch of Adrienne’s store in NYC as she dreamed, Sylvia settled for opening her own English language bookstore and lending library right there in Paris and thus Shakespeare and Company was created in 1919. 

The bookstore quickly became a center for Anglo-American culture and the modernism movement rising with the young artists of Paris. Modernist writer and poet Gertrude Stein was Sylvia’s first subscriber to the lending library, soon followed by other Americans in the quarter. As the exchange rate became more favorable with the declining value of the franc, Americans flooded Paris and Shakespeare and Company. Within a short time, Sylvia’s little bookstore had outgrown its space. In 1921, the bookstore relocated to 12 rue de l’Odéon, still on the Left Bank and now right across from Adrienne’s bookstore. 

What made Shakespeare and Company such a notable bookstore in history is Sylvia herself. Yes, she and her bookstore attracted big names like Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Stein, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot and others from the “Lost Generation” that found themselves in the literary world of early 20th century Paris, but the true magic of the bookstore wasn’t the notoriety of the patrons it attracted and served, but the atmosphere and camaraderie cultivated there. It was a place for artists to read, write, debate, meet others of similar opinions or have their ideas challenged. Sylvia was a quiet force in the world of literature, perhaps not writing the great novels that challenged and expanded the bounds of literature herself, but supporting, encouraging and connecting the great minds that did. She—and her bookstore—nurtured the attitude of the age, the push toward expansion of creative expression and the movements that allowed for creative freedom and acceptance. Sylvia was a staunch supporter of artistic freedom and Shakespeare and Company reflected this, focusing on modern, often avant-garde literature. She constantly encouraged and supported writers with their own pursuits, even sending their manuscripts to editors of literary magazines in order to promote their writing. To the Americans and Brits who frequented her bookstore, this commitment to artistic freedom was a stark difference from the censorship being seen in their countries. 

Shakespeare and Company was more than just a bookstore and its import to the writers and readers it served is obvious. No small part of that impact came from Sylvia’s hospitality. When Ernest Hemingway, who became a lifelong friend of Sylvia’s, couldn’t afford the cost of joining the lending library, she let him borrow books for free. Hemingway said of Sylvia, “No one that I ever knew was nicer to me.” She was known to have lent money and acted as an exchange, offered warm cups of tea, passed messages for her patrons, held mail for them, and even went as far as keeping an extra bed for artists in need of a place to stay. One writer who took advantage of this hospitality was James Joyce, who used the bookstore as his office and with whom the legacy of Shakespeare and Company will forever be tied.

When Joyce’s serialized publication of Ulysses in the American journal The Little Review was met with outrage, an obscenity trial and an eventual ban in America and England, Sylvia stepped in and offered to publish the novel in its entirety herself. Doing so nearly bankrupted Shakespeare and Company and required more of Sylvia than she had maybe been expecting. In order to fund the project, she had to organize international subscription lists in addition to local. Working with Joyce required so much of her attention she had to hire outsiders to run the bookshop while she acted as Joyce’s editor and secretary, correcting proofs and hiring typists for him as well as persuading the printer to add the 90,000 words of additional text Joyce wrote last minute—costly changes that Sylvia had to fund after typesetting had already begun. In the end, Sylvia got it done and had two editions printed in time for Joyce’s fortieth birthday in 1922. The success of the novel brought enough attention to Sylvia and Shakespeare and Company that the bookstore resurfaced from its financial problems. In 1932, Joyce sold Ulysses to Random House for a massive advance of $45,000, didn’t announce it to Sylvia and didn’t give her a cut. Sylvia later wrote, “I understood from the first that, working with or for Mr. Joyce, the pleasure was mine—an infinite pleasure: the profits were for him.” From my view, this seems to be an especially nasty move by Joyce considering the 30’s saw more financial difficulty for Shakespeare and Company with the Depression taking its toll and Americans leaving Paris as the exchange rate became less favorable.

Shakespeare and Company was in danger of closing but just as it had been there for all of its patrons for nearly two decades, they were there for the store in its time of need. In 1936, Sylvia thought she’d have to close the store but André Gide, French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, swept in, organizing the Friends of Shakespeare and Company, a club of writers who helped keep the store afloat. The exclusive club was limited to 200 members that each paid 200 francs a year to attend readings at the bookstore for about two years. Members and readings included French poet Paul Valery, Bryher, T.S. Eliot, and Hemingway, who broke his rule about not doing public readings to read with poet Stephen Spender. Their funding, as well as the attention these renowned authors brought to the store, kept Shakespeare and Company open. Sylvia said, “We were so glorious with all these famous writers and all the press we received that we began to do very well in business.”

Shakespeare and Company remained open for another five years, continuing on as it had since its inception. Paris had been occupied since 1939 but Sylvia—and Shakespeare and Company—had stayed until 1941 when Nazis arrived on Sylvia’s doorstep. As Sylvia put it, “The Gestapo would come and they’d say ‘You have a Jewish girl – you had – in the bookshop. And you have a black mark against you.’ I’d say ‘Okay, okay.’ And they said, ‘We’ll come for you, you know.’ I always said okay to them. One day, they came.” They came, indeed. One December day, a Nazi officer went to Shakespeare and Company and demanded the last copy of Joyce’s other notable work, Finnegans Wake. Sylvia refused to sell it to him. The officer promised to return to confiscate all of the books in the shop. Acting quickly, Sylvia enlisted friends to help her hide every single book in Shakespeare and Company in a vacant apartment upstairs to keep it out of Nazi hands. It’s said she even removed the bookshelves from the walls of the store and painted over the sign outside, leaving no indication Shakespeare and Company had ever been there.

Shakespeare and Company never reopened. 

Sylvia was taken by Nazis in September 1942 and was interned until Spring 1943. After being freed, she returned to the neighborhood of Shakespeare and Company, rue de l’Odeon, and waited out the war with Adrienne. In 1956, Sylvia wrote her memoir, Shakespeare and Company. She stayed in Paris until her death in 1962. 

Sadly, and surprisingly in my opinion, the current day Shakespeare and Company is not located in either of Sylvia’s original locations. In fact, the current bookstore sporting the famous name is just an ode to Sylvia, her legacy and her impact on the literary world and Paris. Its founder was George Whitman, an American in Paris just as Sylvia was. He opened his bookstore, originally named Le Mistral, in 1951 across the Seine from Notre-Dame. Despite not yet having adopted the Shakespeare and Company name, Whitman seemed to be following in Sylvia’s footsteps, operating as a bookstore as well as a lending library and allowing in-need artists to stay the night. Over 30,000 artists have done so since the bookstore’s opening. He called these overnighters “Tumbleweeds” and only asked them to read a book a day, possibly help out around the store and write a one-page autobiography for the store’s archives. 

Like the original Shakespeare and Company, Le Mistral also attracted notable writers of its time including James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Henry Miller, Allen Ginsberg and more. More than one literary publication had the store listed as their editorial address and a literary journal was run from the upstairs library for several years. Sylvia even visited the bookstore in the 50s. It’s said that she called Le Mistral the “spiritual successor” of her own bookstore and that she offered her bookstore’s name to Whitman at a dinner party. It was on the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death and two years after Sylvia’s death that Whitman renamed the store to Shakespeare and Company. This bookstore became a major cultural establishment in Paris, readers and writers flocking to it for its own charms but also to celebrate the continuation of Sylvia Beach’s legacy. 

The current day Shakespeare and Company looks like a dream of a bookstore. It’s run by Whitman’s daughter, Sylvia (yes, named for Sylvia Beach), and continues on in the way George Whitman intended, with the beds for Tumbleweeds still tucked in among the shelves and weekly events to attract and encourage writers and readers. FestivalandCo, a literary festival held every other year, was founded by Sylvia Whitman in 2003. In 2010, she founded a contest for unpublished novellas called The Paris Literary Prize. Shakespeare and Company has even opened a little café right next to the bookstore, a dream of George’s since the late sixties that his daughter made happen in 2015. A year later, they published Shakespeare and Company, Paris: A History of the Rag & Bone Shop of the Heart, the story of their bookstore.

Looking into the history of Shakespeare and Company was fascinating and led me down more than one unexpected path. What a story this bookstore has. Shakespeare and Company was an iconic bookstore within the literary world of Paris in the 1920s and 1930s, loved by then-upcoming and now renowned authors and regular people alike. Sylvia Beach was an incredible woman who should never be forgotten. Her bookstore, her efforts to encourage writers and her promotion of unusual works in order to support artistic freedom have had an immeasurable impact on literature. André Chamson, a French writer, summed it up nicely when he wrote, “Sylvia carried pollen like a bee. She cross-fertilized these writers. She did more to link England, the United States, Ireland, and France than four great ambassadors combined. It was not merely for the pleasure of friendship that Joyce, Hemingway, Bryher, and so many others often took the path to Shakespeare and Company in the heart of Paris, to meet there all these French writers. But nothing is more mysterious than such fertilizations through dialogue, reading, or simple contact.”

It’s so brilliant that George Whitman thought to honor Sylvia by changing the name of his already well-loved bookstore and it’s even better that Sylvia’s unique approach to bookselling and her fostering of artists is being carried on through the Whitmans’ incarnation of Shakespeare and Company. 

Want to Know More?

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Shakespeare and Company 

by Sylvia Beach

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Sylvia Beach was intimately acquainted with the expatriate and visiting writers of the Lost Generation, a label that she never accepted. Like moths of great promise, they were drawn to her well-lighted bookstore and warm hearth on the Left Bank. Shakespeare and Company evokes the zeitgeist of an era through its revealing glimpses of James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, Sherwood Anderson, Andre Gide, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, D. H. Lawrence, and others already famous or soon to be. In his introduction to this new edition, James Laughlin recalls his friendship with Sylvia Beach.

 

 

 

Shakespeare and Company, Paris: A History of the Rag & Bone Shop of the Heart

by Krista Halverson (Editor)

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This is a first-ever history of the legendary bohemian bookstore in Paris. It interweaves essays and poetry from dozens of writers associated with the shop–Allen Ginsberg, Anaïs Nin, Ethan Hawke, Robert Stone and Jeanette Winterson, among others–with hundreds of never-before-seen archival pieces. It includes photographs of James Baldwin, William Burroughs and Langston Hughes, plus a foreword by the celebrated British novelist Jeanette Winterson and an epilogue by Sylvia Whitman, the daughter of the store’s founder, George Whitman. The book has been edited by Krista Halverson, director of the newly founded Shakespeare and Company publishing house.

 

 

 

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I cannot wait for the day I eventually get to visit Shakespeare and Company for myself. Perhaps I’ll even be a Tumbleweed for a night and add my own story to the archives of this iconic bookstore. 

I hope you enjoyed learning about Sylvia Beach and Shakespeare and Company as much as I did. Would you like to visit this bookstore someday? Have you already been there? Let me know in the comments!

Thanks for reading,

Madison