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"Shakespeare and Company" store, Paris, 2004

Poet's Corner

Shakespeare and Company is an independent bookstore located in the 5th arrondissement, in Paris's Left Bank. Shakespeare and Company serves as both a bookstore and a lending library, specializing in English-language literature. The upstairs also serves as a makeshift dormitory for travelers, known as "tumbleweeds," who earn their keep by working in the shop for a couple of hours each day.

The bookstore's most famous proprietor was Sylvia Beach, who ran the shop at 12 rue de l'Odéon, from 1919 to 1941 (the shop is currently located at 37 rue de la Bûcherie). During this era, the store was considered to be a center of Anglo/American literary culture in Paris. The shop was often visited by authors of the "Lost Generation," such as Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and James Joyce. The contents of the store were considered high quality and reflected Beach's own literary taste. Shakespeare and Company, as well as its literary denizens, was repeatedly mentioned in Hemingway's A Moveable Feast. Patrons could buy or borrow books like D. H. Lawrence's controversial Lady Chatterley's Lover, which had been banned in England and the United States.

It was Beach who first published Joyce's book Ulysses in 1922. The book was subsequently banned in the United States and United Kingdom. Shakespeare and Company published several other editions of Ulysses under its imprint in later years.

The original Shakespeare and Company was closed in December 1941, due to the occupation of France by the Axis powers during World War II. Allegedly, the store was ordered shut because Beach denied a German officer the last copy of Joyce's Finnegans Wake. The store at rue de l'Odéon never re-opened.

In 1951, another English-language bookstore was opened in Paris's Left Bank by American George Whitman, under the name of Le Mistral. Much like its predecessor (which was at a different location), the store served as a focal point for literary culture in Bohemian, Left Bank Paris. Upon Sylvia Beach's death, the store's name was changed to Shakespeare and Company. In the 1950s, the shop served as a base for many of the writers of the Beat Generation, such as Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, and William Burroughs. Whitman's daughter, Sylvia, now runs the shop. This store continues to operate at 37 rue de la Bûcherie, near Place St. Michel and steps from the Seine River.

George Whitman has been running what he calls "a socialist utopia masquerading as a bookstore" for 50 years. His store has long been a literary hub, attracting the likes of Henry Miller, Richard Wright, and William Burroughs. More importantly, George has been inviting people to live in his shop from its very first days. There are now 13 beds among the books, and he says that more than 40,000 people have slept there at one time or another. All he asks is that you make your bed in the morning, help out in the shop, and read a book a day. After living here for five months, I was inspired to write my own book about the place. From Jeremy Mercer's top 10 bookshops

• Shakespeare and Company is featured in the third season of Highlander: The Series as a bookstore in Paris operated by Watcher Don Salzer. In the fourth season, the Immortal Methos uses a hidden room in the bookstore's cellar as storage space for his ancient journals.
• Shakespeare and Company is featured in the opening scene of the movie Before Sunset, where the protagonist Jesse Wallace is interviewed about his book.
• Portrait of a Bookstore as an Old Man[1] is a one-hour documentary about the bookstore directed by Gonzague Pichelin and Benjamin Sutherland.
• Jeremy Mercer's experiences at Shakespeare and Company are the subject of his memoir Time Was Soft There (US 2005, St. Martin's Press)/Books, Baguettes & Bedbugs (UK).

• "Hemingway at Shakespeare & Company," by John Affleck, at Literary Traveler
• "The Beats go on", by Alix Sharkey, March 3, 2002, at The Observer

• Shakespeare and Company Official Site
• "Shakespeare and Company"