Shakespeare and Company: Why Paris’s most famous bookshop still feels like a pilgrimage

A century after it first opened, Shakespeare and Company remains more than a bookshop; it’s a living testament to the power of words, memory, and belonging. 
There are bookshops that sell books, and then there’s Shakespeare and Company. Each time I visit, as I did again recently, I’m

reminded that this isn’t merely a shop. It’s a symbol. It’s about history, the writers, and the romance of Paris.

That’s what the crowd of readers who queue patiently outside hopes to see. A visit to Shakespeare and Company feels less like consumerism and more like a quiet act of devotion. For anyone who loves books and literature, walking through its green doors is akin to a pilgrimage.

Sylvia Beach and the birth of a literary legend

The original Shakespeare and Company was opened in 1919 at 12 rue de l'Odéon by Sylvia Beach, an American expat whose passion for books and generosity of spirit shaped the literary life of Paris between the wars.

The shop soon became the heart of the city’s English-speaking creative community. It wasn’t only a bookshop — it was a lending library, salon, and sanctuary for writers now immortalised as the “Lost Generation.”

Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, Djuna Barnes, and T.S. Eliot all passed through its doors, and in the process became friends with Beach.

“It underscores how Shakespeare and Company was more than just a shop. It was a movement in literary history — a place where ideas were debated, friendships formed, and artistic boundaries stretched.”

James Joyce was there too, and he was more than a visitor. Beach came to his literary rescue, performing a hugely important act in the history of modern literature.

Joyce had been unable to find a publisher for his controversial novel Ulysses, which had been banned and burned in various countries. Beach published it herself in 1922 — an act of literary defiance that secured the book’s place in history and her own reputation as one of modernism’s great enablers.

Though Beach’s shop closed in 1941 during the early years of the Second World War, after she was imprisoned by German forces, its spirit lingered — waiting for someone else to reopen the door.

George Whitman and the rebirth of a bookshop

In 1951, another American, George Whitman, opened his own English-language bookshop across the Seine. He named it Le Mistral, but that name didn’t last.

In 1958, during a party for James Joyce, Sylvia Beach herself allowed Whitman to use the original name. Six years later, in 1964, to mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth, the shop officially became the new Shakespeare and Company.

Whitman’s version revived the philosophy of the original. His shop became a haven for writers, travellers, and dreamers — offering beds among the books to aspiring authors who agreed to help around the store.

Thousands of “Tumbleweeds,” as Whitman called them, have stayed there over the decades, leaving behind journal entries, friendships, and sometimes novels.

Today, the shop is run by his daughter, Sylvia Whitman, and continues to balance commerce with community. It hosts readings, publishes books, and remains fiercely independent — a rare feat in an era of online giants and homogenised retail.

Why readers still make the pilgrimage

Why, then, does Shakespeare and Company still draw such crowds? For me, the answer lies somewhere between myth and memory. Its magnetism isn’t only about Hemingway or Joyce — it’s about what the shop still represents: a quiet act of resistance.

A shining star in the world of independent bookshops, it stands as a bulwark against haste, against disposability, against forgetting.

“The crooked shelves, the typewriter upstairs, the cat napping in a window seat — all conspire to create a space where reading feels sacred again.”

To step into Shakespeare and Company is to touch the long thread of literary history — to feel connected to every reader and writer who ever wandered through Paris with a book under their arm or an idea for a story in their head. In a world increasingly digitised and distracted, that connection feels almost miraculous.

The enduring magic of Paris’s literary heart

Shakespeare and Company’s magic lies in its ability to hold the past and present in the same breath. Tourists come for the history; readers stay for the atmosphere.

The shop’s walls are covered in handwritten notes, its corners filled with ghosts and beginnings. You can buy a book stamped with the shop’s logo, but what you really take away is the feeling that you’ve brushed against something enduring.

For all its fame, the bookshop hasn’t lost its soul. It still feels human-sized — intimate, defiantly analogue. It has a cragginess, a crooked delight that’s such a relief from the homogeneity of chain bookshops around the world. And it reminds us that literature isn’t just about ownership; it’s about belonging.

Five books to capture the spirit of Shakespeare and Company

If you’ve ever felt the pull of that green façade, these books will help you linger there a little longer:

1. Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation by Noel Riley Fitch – A fascinating portrait of the original shop and its extraordinary founder.

2. Time Was Soft There by Jeremy Mercer – A memoir of living and working at the modern Shakespeare and Company, full of eccentric charm.

3. A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway – A lyrical recollection of the 1920s Paris literary scene that orbited the original shop.

4. The Paris Wife by Paula McLain – A novelised take on Hemingway’s first marriage and the intoxicating bohemia of the Lost Generation.

5. The Shakespeare and Company Book of Interviews – A collection of author conversations hosted by the shop, capturing its living literary legacy.

A living, breathing legacy

Shakespeare and Company isn’t a museum. It’s alive — imperfect, romantic, and evolving. No surprise that it features in Richard Linklater’s 2004 film Before Sunset, starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy.

At its core, Shakespeare and Company reminds us that literature isn’t just something we consume; it’s something we belong to.

“Perhaps that’s why, even now, the line outside keeps growing — because everyone, in some small way, wants to stand where words have mattered most.”

A small mea culpa. Please forgive me. Although it is not permitted, I did it. I wouldn't usually, but on this occasion, I took photographs as I was planning to write a story and produce other content to celebrate Shakespeare and Company. I wanted to celebrate it, share what it is like, and hopefully contribute to its enduring appeal. It's the reporter / writer in me.