Shakespeare + Company Book Shop Paris

shakespeareandcompany.com


What a delightful bookshop this really is. It's a gem of a store located at 37 rue de la Bûcherie, Paris, and is open 10am to 11pm, seven days a week. This is the second incarnation of this store. Back in 1919 Sylvia Beach opened the original store and it became a place for English speaking writers to hang and spend their time. The likes of Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, and F Scott Fitzgerald spent lots of time here. Sylvia famously published Ulysses in 1922 which was then banned in the UK and the USA. Hemingway mentioned the store in his memoir A Moveable Feast.
The store was closed in 1940 during the Nazi occupation.

The current bookshop was opened by the american George Whitman in 1951. The new store was frequented by many English writers especially from the Beat generation, like Burroughs Ginsberg and Corso. Their are 14 beds where people can spend the night, if they help out in the shop for two hours a day and also read a book a day. Not a bad deal. George's daughter Sylvia Beach Whitman currently runs the store and continues to let young writers to live and work in the shop. She has also started a literary festival, writer's meetings and poetry readings. I was lucky when i stopped by to catch the Pulitzer winning author Paul Harding read excerpts from his novel Tinkers.
The bookstore still has lots of charm, and has a treasure trove of books within. I can't wait to return. It also recently featured in the Woody Allen film Midnight In Paris.
http://www.minuit-a-paris.com/

http://www.sonyclassics.com/midnightinparis/

http://www.lonelyplanet.com/france/paris