Shakespeare and Company (bookstore)

The bookstore standing before you began its life in 1951 as a shop called Le Mistral. Its founder, George Whitman, was an American ex-serviceman who arrived in Paris with little more than his books and a desire to create a space that functioned more like a community than a business. He filled his shelves with literature and kept his own living quarters open to anyone in need of a place to read. He eventually renamed the store Shakespeare and Company in 1964 to honor a different, legendary bookshop that had closed in Paris decades earlier.