Shakespeare & Company, Volume I
The woman who started this iconic bookstore did a lot for the Paris literati
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Have you heard of Sylvia Beach? What about James Joyce?
If you answer ‘yes’ to both questions, you win.
If you don’t know who Sylvia Beach was, she was a key figure for the Paris literati - especially expats - during the 1920s.
Sylvia Beach was an American whose family relocated to France in 1901, when she was a teenager (her father was a minister at the American Church in Paris).
In 1919, she opened her English-language bookshop and library, Shakespeare and Company. Her inspiration was a French shop she became acquainted with that sold and lent books. Sylvia Beach served as a good friend and supporter to many great writers. She was responsible for the first publication of James Joyce’s epic tome Ulysses when no one else seemed interested.
Her cozy shop, located just north of the Jardin du Luxembourg in the 6th arrondisement, was a welcome spot for well-known scribblers and literature lovers like Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. In fact, Beach used to hold Hemingway’s mail for him at Shakespeare and Company (which he describes in his book A Moveable Feast).
Shakespeare and Company thrived during the Roaring Twenties. But that time gave way to the Great Depression of the 1930s, when Beach struggled to keep it open. Thanks to the generosity of her more wealthy friends, she managed to keep it afloat. Then, with war having broken out on the European front in the early 1940s, she was forced to close.
A version of Shakespeare and Company is still around today, but it’s not the original one linked to Sylvia Beach. This one was opened in 1951 by George Whitman, who wanted to pay homage to her shop. It’s in a terrific location: on the Left Bank, just across from the Notre Dame Cathedral.
The second Shakespeare and Company was once something of a bohemian bedsit/hangout/bookstore, which served newer generations of writers and literature lovers. In fact, sometime in the 1990s, I visited the store on rue de la Bûcherie and had a conversation with a fellow American who was living there for a few weeks. I bet it was Whitman himself who let him stay there.
If I’ve caught your interest so far, stay with me.
There is a really cool (!) project online called The Shakespeare and Company Project. After Beach’s death, many of her affects were acquired by Princeton University, which funds the project. With all that rich material, they’re doing is going through all the old lending slips from her library to find out more who the members were, where they lived, what they read, and other biographical information. It’s a fascinating project and one worth checking out.
Below is just a screen grab, but if you click on this link it’ll take you to their website.
For example, below is the lending slip for Ernest Hemingway. You can see two of his former addresses in Paris, both crossed out. Isn’t that cool??
Even though the current Shakespeare and Company is not the original, it’s still worth passing by if you’re in Paris. It has now expanded to include a restaurant/café and there is usually a huge crowd in front of it, with people waiting to get inside the bookstore.
In short: it’s a tourist trap. But it’s still worth a peek.
The End.