Shakespeare and Company Paris full
by Weston Westmoreland
Title
Shakespeare and Company Paris full
Artist
Weston Westmoreland
Medium
Photograph - Photograph
Description
Shakespeare and Company bookstore, Paris. Full panorama.
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. 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. Sylvia's Shakespeare & Co. was forced to close in 1941 during the German occupation of Paris. Beach was arrested and imprisoned for six months. Upon her release toward the end of the war, Beach was in ill health, and was never able to reopen Shakespeare & Co.
The current Shakespeare and Co bookstore at rue de la Bucherie was opened in 1951 by American George Whitman. Originally called "Le Mistral", it was renamed to "Shakespeare and Company" in 1964 in tribute to Sylvia Beach's store 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. 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. 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.
As for Paris... what can one say about the City of Light that has not already been said...?
More views of Paris one copy-paste away in my Gallery at http://westonwestmoreland.com/collections/paris
Weston Westmoreland.
Uploaded
June 9th, 2021
Embed
Share
Similar Images
Recently Viewed
