Newly opened Shakespeare & Company Café lives right next-door to — you guessed it — the famed bookstore that carries the same name on the bord de la Seine in the 5th. The bookstore has quite the long history: American expat Sylvia Beach opened the original Shakespeare & Company bookshop at 12 rue de l’Odéon in 1922, its home until it was closed during the Nazi occupation of Paris. Beach published the first version of Joyce’s Ulysses, lent out novels to Hemingway for free, and ran in the circles of writers such as T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and Man Ray. Ergo, she was connected.
In 1951, late New Jersey native George Whitman opened his quaint bookshop at 37 rue de la Bûcherie, and named it after Beach’s establishment. “I’m going to open a literary café,” Whitman said in 1969. Forty six years later, his daughter Sylvia and Marc Grossman, realized his dream.
With a (book) selection ranging from Whitman to Twilight, this is the perfect spot to spend an afternoon leafing through the classics while sipping a Café Crême. Oh and while people watching, of course, thanks to its perfect location.
Shakespeare & Company Café
37 rue de la Bûcherie
75005 Paris
+33 (0)1 43 25 40 93
