SHAKESPEARE & COMPANY
This great place was opened almost one century ago by Sylvia Beach. She was the first one to publish “Ulysse” by James Joyce or to sell banned books in England and in the United States such as “Lady Chatterley’s lover”. During this period, the shop was considered as the centre of American English culture in Paris. Hemingway, Ezra Pound, Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein or James Joyce stayed there regularly. George Whitman took over from Sylvia Beach in 1951 and then it was the turn of the Beat Generation’s writers to take possession of the premises.
Today, Whitman’s daughter, Sylvia, manages the bookshop which is still a landing place for many travelers of the whole world who can sleep at Shakespeare and Co in exchange for working a few hours there. Students can consult thousands of books, new ones, old ones, and even rare ones, which are piled up and cover all the walls and the shelves.
