Shakespeare and Company

In the middle of the Latin Quarter, on the Left Bank near Notre Dame is Shakespeare and Company.  A Parisian bookshop that stocks English books for travelling writers.  ‘It’s a socialist utopia masquerading as a book store,’ Sylvia Whitman tells us her father used to call it.  ‘We try to be more than a book shop, we have a community of readers and writers and we sell books only in English.’ 

Practically born in the bookshop Sylvia took over the running of the shop when her father, George Whitman retired at 93.  Shakespeare and Company was originally opened in 1919 by an American woman called Sylvia Beech.  She became famous in Paris for publishing James Joyce’s Ulysses.  Her bookshop became a Mecca for writers and many famous names stopped off at Shakespeare and Company.  Hemmingway stayed over when he didn’t have a fixed address in Paris, Gertrude Stein was the first customer; and past customers and writers in residence read like a who’s who of literary fiction.

Sylvia Beech closed her bookshop closed in 1941, which was how it remained until George Whitman opened it again in August 1951.  Immediately writers began flocking there, and it became a stopping off point for many writers from the Beat Generation.   Allen Ginsberg frequented the shop; William Burroughs did research for Naked Lunch in the library on the first floor.  Sylvia says:  ‘Gregory Corso stole a lot of books.’  And  Anais Nin left her will under George’s bed which they only found quite recently.  ‘It became a very lively place and he really has kept it exactly the same as when he started.’

Shakespeare and Company has beds for writers to sleep in, tucked away in the corners of the store.    A piano that has been a feature for many years.   And wouldn’t be complete without a typewriter cupboard for writers to pen their latest work in.  ‘Give what you can, take what you need’ was George’s philosophy.  Sylvia says:   ‘he asked them to help him in the bookshop and in exchange was able to give them a bed’.

Sylvia has chosen Howl by Allan Ginsberg as she says it ‘represents the spirit of the bookshop’.

Howl by Allen Ginsberg
Opening with the famous first lines:  ‘I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness.’  Sylvia tells us the poem has a connection to Shakespeare and Company,   ‘Allan Ginsberg spent a lot of time here at the bookshop; he also did a renowned reading of this poem when he stripped off his clothes, so a very dramatic reading.  And throughout the poem you get a sense of a youth and a young spirit which is relevant to the bookshop; here we have a lot young writers.  It’s also just an incredible poem.’