Audio GuideShakespeare and Company
Iconic, English-language bookstore stocking new & used titles in bohemian surrounds since 1951.
Book Store
Paris, France
Hidden in the heart of Paris, just steps from the grand towers of Notre-Dame Cathedral, sits one of the city’s most beloved havens for book lovers: Shakespeare and Company. On a quiet street in the Latin Quarter—Paris’s fifth arrondissement—the aroma of old books mixes with the scent of fresh coffee, and the soft murmur of readers fills the air. This quirky English-language bookstore has been a sanctuary for the curious and creative for over seventy years.
But its story begins earlier, in the years after the First World War. Sylvia Beach, an American who dreamed of bringing English literature to eager readers, opened the first Shakespeare and Company in nineteen nineteen. Her shop, a gathering place for exiles, poets, and artists, became central to Paris’s creative spirit. It is where Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, and Gertrude Stein spent hours talking about art and life. In a remarkable act of courage, Sylvia published the first edition of Joyce’s “Ulysses” when other publishers refused.
After troubled times—the Second World War and French occupation—the original shop closed. But in the early nineteen fifties, George Whitman, another American, reopened an English-language bookstore on rue de la Bûcherie. He called it Shakespeare and Company in honor of Sylvia Beach. George welcomed travelers in a unique way: if someone needed a place to sleep, he would offer a bed among the books. All he asked was a few hours’ work each day and that they read a book—a tradition that continues to this day.
Shakespeare and Company became a crossroads for dreamers, especially during the post-war bohemian revival. Writers and musicians from the Beat Generation—like Allen Ginsberg and even Jim Morrison—found a home here. The shop holds regular poetry readings, Sunday tea gatherings, and literary festivals, bringing people together from all over the world. Today, Sylvia Whitman, George’s daughter, continues her family’s legacy, keeping the doors open to readers and aspiring writers.
For travelers searching for the soul of Parisian art and literature, Shakespeare and Company remains a living, breathing piece of history—a book-lined world where stories are both sold and lived.
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