Ashley Wallace posted this on FB the other day:
"Anyone else looking forward to being able to travel and explore other towns’ bookstores again?"
We certainly are. I think the most fun we have is when we happen upon a bookstore just by chance. We probably won't be buying many more books on our travels but we will always browse.
 "Shakespeare and Company" store, Paris, 2013 | |
 | |
| Location | Left Bank, Paris, France |
|---|---|
| Owner | Sylvia Beach Whitman |
| Type | Bookstore |
| Opened | 19 November 1919 1922 1951 |
| Website | |
| shakespeareandcompany | |
Shakespeare and Company was the name of the iconic English language bookstore founded by Sylvia Beach in 1919 on Paris' Left Bank, and where Beach went on to publish James Joyce's "Ulysses." A later independent English-language bookstore was opened in 1951 by George Whitman, also located on Paris' Left Bank, but under a different name. Whitman adopted the "Shakespeare & Co." name for his store in 1965, and it continues to operate under that name to this day.
The original Shakespeare & Co. was established by Sylvia Beach, an American expatriate, 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 and lending library was a gathering place for many then-aspiring and renowned writers and poets such as Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway, Djuna Barnes, James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and Ford Madox Ford.[1] The original Shakespeare & Co. was forced to close in 1941 during the German occupation of Paris. Beach was arrested and imprisoned for six months by Nazi authorities. Upon her release toward the end of the war, Beach was in ill health, and was never able to reopen Shakespeare & Co.[2]
The later and current bookstore is situated at 37 rue de la Bûcherie, in the 5th arrondissement. 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.
