This was the venue for last nights Room to Read Charity Event, where we launched the month of 'buy a book, give a book'. It is the most fascinating shop in the heart of Paris and here is a bit about its history:
Shakespeare & Co. is an English-language bookshop, on the banks of the Seine, opposite Notre-Dame. Since opening in 1951, it’s been a meeting place for anglophone writers and readers, becoming a Left Bank literary institution.
The bookshop was founded by American George Whitman, and in 2006 his daughter took over the running of the shop.
When the store first opened, it was called Le Mistral. George changed it to the present name in April 1964—on the four-hundredth anniversary of William Shakespeare’s birth—in honor of a bookseller he admired, Sylvia Beach, who’d founded the original Shakespeare and Company in 1919. Her store at 12 rue de l’Odéon was a gathering place for the great expat writers of the time—Joyce, Hemingway, Stein, Fitzgerald, Eliot, Pound—as well as for leading French writers.
From the first day George's store opened, writers, artists, and intellectuals were invited to sleep among the shop’s shelves and piles of books, on small beds that doubled as benches during the day. Since then, an estimated 30,000 young and young-at-heart writers and artists have stayed in the bookshop, including then unknowns such as Alan Sillitoe, Robert Stone, Kate Grenville, Sebastian Barry, Ethan Hawke, Jeet Thayil, Darren Aronfsky, Geoffrey Rush, and David Rakoff. These guests are called Tumbleweeds after the rolling thistles that “drift in and out with the winds of chance,”.
Three things are asked of each Tumbleweed: read a book a day, help at the shop for a few hours a day, and produce a one-page autobiography. Thousands and thousands of these autobiographies have been collected and now form an impressive archive, capturing generations of writers, travelers, and dreamers who have left behind pieces of their stories.
What a fascinating history. Love the concept of the shop...and the setting where it sits. Lovely capture. If I have time, I will try to check it out while in Paris next month :)
@leggzy It's right beside Notre-Dame so I'm sure you'll have time to pop in! It's an amazing den with narrow corridors and shelves full of books. I'll post a few more shots over the next few days which will give you a feel for the place - the outside is very discreet!
@parisouailleurs No, I didn't do that as we were having a fund-raising event in the main shop. We had our own food and drink! ;-) But I will go back to the shop some day and try out the restaurant too.
As soon as I saw this I said to myself, "I walked past this every day for a week when I stayed in Paris no it couldn't be the same one!" But after reading your interesting commentary on it I'm sure it is :) I've only ever been to Paris for 1 week of my life, but I loved every moment of it :) Fav
@mazaz It's a great spot Mimi - you must check it out if you get back to Paris! Normally no photography inside, but I got a special 'ok' because I was involved with the charity event in the bookshop. I'm about to pop over and follow you, by the way, I keep meaning to and never get round to it! :-)
Fascinating, indeed! I recognized the name of the original shop from the works of Gertrude Stein and so it was quite interesting to read the history that tied it all together. What they do with the Tumbleweeds concept is quite remarkable. Another Paris Fav and another place on my must-see list when I visit Paris.
If you have never watched the 'Before Sunrise' Trilogy (Ethan Hawke, Julie Delphy) you should check them out. It's a series of three movies, all filmed 10 years apart. The thrid one starts off at this location.
@gaylewood Yes, the tumbleweeds are just so cool! And funnier is that those that were staying in the bookshop at the time of our charity event cleaned up all our leftover food and drink at an amazing pace!
March 6th, 2016
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