Shakespeare And Company - Paris

The Shakespeare and Company site is on Rue de l'Odeon in Paris.  It was here that American expatriate Sylvia Beach ran her famous book store from 1921 to 1941.  She opened her first Shakespeare and Company in 1919 at 8 rue Dupuytren and the English language bookstore did so well that she moved here to larger quarters on the Rue de l'Odeon in May of 1921.  The store was to be a focal point of the young expatriate writers in France for much of the 20's.  Ernest Hemingway frequented the premises and became goodfriends with Beach.  Other famous visitors included Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, Thornton Wilder and T.S. Eliot.  In 1922 Beach published struggling author James Joyce's Ulysses.  The store remained opened during the depression, but was forced to close in 1941, after the Nazi occupation of Paris.  Beach was arrested and imprisoned from 1941 to 1942.  The store never re-opened, but Beach continued to maintain her apartment here, the same one she used during the war to hide her books from the Nazis.  She died in the upstairs apartment on October 5, 1962 at the age of 75.  The facade of the building has changed drastically since her time, but there is a plaque on the front marking the importance of the site.

 Submit photo(s) for this home.