Few book lovers are unfamiliar with one of the most famous independent bookshops in the world, Shakespeare and Company in Paris, France. Fewer may know that it was an American, Sylvia Beach who opened the iconic bookshop on Nov. 19, 1919. Beach first wanted to be a writer but found she couldn’t live with the rejection, so instead, she decided to open a bookstore. And that she did to the best of her ability and to great acclaim.
Beach was solely responsible for publishing James Joyce’s Ulysses during a time when it was being banned by the rest of the world for what was deemed “obscene.” She became a promoter of English language books in her beloved adopted city and formed some famous friendships with the most prestigious writers of the day.
The news of my bookshop, to my surprise, soon spread all over the United States, and it was the first thing the pilgrims looked up in Paris. They were all customers at Shakespeare and Company, which many of them looked upon as their club, often they would inform me that they had given Shakespeare and company as their address, and they hoped I didn’t mind. I didn’t especially since it was too late to do anything about it except to try to run an important mailing office as efficiently as possible.
~ Sylvia Beach writing in her memoir
A Parisian Pilgrimage
After I became the sole proprietor of my own independent bookstore, I planned a trip to Paris to see the bookshop that quietly played a part in my own dream of owning a bookstore. In some small way, I’d hope to bring back some Parisian magic that would infuse and inspire my own shop. Paris had been on my bucket list for years as my love of historical novels set in Paris was never-ending.
The French are known to value books and their many book shops; more than one on many blocks is evidence of how important these places are. When I purchased my store in 2013, America was crying over the death of the book. Not so in Paris.
People carried books and sat on park benches, on the Metro, and in cafés reading physical books. I couldn’t walk past a bookshop without entering to the dismay of my daughters who were more interested in the patisseries than the bookshops. I’d never seen so many different bookshops, each one unique. We made our sojourn to Shakespeare and Company located on the Seine across from Notre Dame Cathedral.
Shakespeare and Company: A History
The famous bookstore has been in its current location since 1964 and owner George Whitman bequeathed it to his daughter Sylvia Whitman, who has run it since 2006. While George died at 98 years old in 2011, it still holds the charm, books, and history of Beach’s original Shakespeare and Company, which was forced to close in 1941 when she was sent to an internment camp for six months after refusing to sell her copy of Joyce’s Finnegans Wake to a Nazi soldier. The shop itself has been captured in several movies and the writers who have visited or read from their works there are legendary.
Throughout his life, George Whitman traveled the world as a self-proclaimed “tumbleweed,” blowing from place to place, sheltered by the grace of strangers. Wishing to repay the generosity he encountered during his journeys, George founded the current version of the bookstore in 1951 with the motto “be not inhospitable to strangers lest they be angels in disguise” and threw open the doors to all sorts of writers, artists, and intellectuals who sought refuge.”
Shakespeare and Company still honors this tradition today. All that is required is to read a book a day and write an essay on it and devote a couple of hours to working in the bookshop. (Interested parties can email www.shakespeareandcompany.com and put “Tumbleweed” in the subject line. That a bookstore enveloped by such a rich history of writers and American ex-pats is intriguing on its own, but then it being solely responsible for publishing one of the greatest literary works in history is something else! To celebrate the 100-year anniversary of Ulysses, Shakespeare and Company is producing the complete text with an ensemble cast on a free podcast between Feb. 2022 and Bloomsday on June 16, 2022.
The Paris Bookseller Encapsulates Sylvia Beach’s Life
On a recent visit to a local bookstore, a new novel titled The Paris Bookseller by Kerri Maher caught my attention. I had been having trouble getting into a new novel and reading about a bookshop would be a quick cure-all. It was a fun fast read that told Beach’s story and her love affair with Adrienne Monnier, a French bookseller and artist herself who was one of the first women in Paris to open a bookshop and who encouraged Beach to pursue her dreams of having an English bookstore and lending library in the heart of Paris.
Related: Best Bookshop Memories
The author, Maher followed the trajectory of Beach’s life as truthfully as possible and her relationships with James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, and Gertrude Stein among so many others. As a reader, I was transported to 1920s Paris. By time traveling, I could almost smell the dusty books, hear the birdsong right outside the treelined street and the bells of Notre Dame drifting across the Seine, and witness the fellowship of the writers drawn to Beach’s shop and each other amidst the stacks of novels.
As is often with good historical fiction, the reader is given a taste of the story and a window into history, but as often happens after I read historical fiction, my appetite is whetted and I want to know more about the time, the place, and the people involved. So, after reading the acknowledgments and the author’s reading list that aided in her researching the story, I ordered a copy of Beach’s memoir titled simply Shakespeare and Company, which was published in 1959. She was a woman ahead of her time in that genre too.
Beach’s Vision Carried on by Whitman
Beach died in 1962 after giving George Whitman her blessing to carry on the legacy of the iconic bookshop, calling it the “spiritual successor” to Shakespeare and Company. Whitman adopted the name Shakespeare and Company in 1964. Under Whitman, the shop again attracts ex-pats, including Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Anais Nin, Richard Wright, William Styron, Henry Miller, James Baldwin, and so many others.
When I visited the shop, I immediately felt comforted by the stacks of books and the little nooks tucked away in corners available to sit and peruse the books. The only clutter I can live with is books, and the books were everywhere.
It was Springtime in Paris, and I keenly felt the thread of history alive. Of course, I couldn’t leave without making a purchase. I bought a copy of The Thing with Feathers by Noah Strycker that hadn’t even been published in the United States yet, and, of course, Victor Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame, a bestseller considering Notre Dame is a neighbor.
I was invigorated by my pilgrimage to Paris and more devoted and excited to carry on the job of a proprietor of my own shop. Shakespeare and Company began as a labor of love for Beach as most independent bookstores are. Through her publishing escapade with Ulysses, all the money she invested in it, and all that she lost because of it, she did more for writers and readers by opening and cultivating this literary landmark, her life’s work to honor writers, their words, and their stories.
Even Shakespeare and Company Has its Struggles
Like so many independent bookstores, Shakespeare and Company had some serious financial issues during the pandemic lockdown, and so they once again looked to Beach who struggled from the same financial strain during the Great Depression when she started “Friends of Shakespeare and Company.” For an annual fee, patrons were invited to readings by T.S. Eliot, Paul Valery, and even Ernest Hemingway, who was a great friend to Beach. Sylvia Whitman, of course, couldn’t do the readings with authors, although the foundation of “Friends” was born of the same idea.
Over the past decade, the bookshop has embarked upon several new adventures, including a café, a literary festival, a writing contest, and a publishing arm. Before the pandemic, Shakespeare and Company hosted free weekly events that were open to the public and available on the shop’s podcast, welcoming writers such as Zadie Smith, Don DeLillo, Carol Ann Duffy, Colson Whitehead, Leïla Slimani, Rachel Cusk, George Saunders, and Jeanette Winterson.
One thing is certain, Shakespeare and Company will continue to have a following all over the world. What an awesome historical legacy for this beloved bookshop.
