100 years of Paris bookshop Shakespeare and Company

Shakespeare and Company is the name of two independent English-language bookstores that have existed on Paris's Left Bank.

The first was opened by Sylvia Beach, an American, on 19 November 1919, at 8 rue Dupuytren, before moving to larger premises at 12 rue de l'Odéon in the 6th arrondissement in 1922.[1] During the 1920s, Beach's shop was a gathering place for many then-aspiring writers such as Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway, Djuna Barnes, James Joyce and Ford Madox Ford.[1] It closed in 1941 during the German occupation of Paris and never re-opened.[2]

The second bookstore is situated at 37 rue de la Bûcherie, in the 5th arrondissement, and is still in operation today. Opened in 1951 by American George Whitman, it was originally called "Le Mistral," but was renamed to "Shakespeare and Company" in 1964 in tribute to Sylvia Beach's store[3] and on the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare's birth. Today, it continues to serve as a purveyor of new and second-hand books, as an antiquarian bookseller, and as a free reading library open to the public.[4] Additionally, the shop houses aspiring writers and artists in exchange for their helping out around the bookstore. Since the shop opened in 1951, more than 30,000 people have slept in the beds found tucked between bookshelves.[5] The shop's motto, "Be Not Inhospitable to Strangers Lest They Be Angels in Disguise," is written above the entrance to the reading library.

The four "Shakespeare & Co" bookstores in New York City, which opened starting in 1981, are not affiliated with the Paris store.