The Secret Feminist History of Shakespeare and Company

Sylvia Beach in front of her bookshop, Shakespeare and Company, Paris, May 1, 1941
"One hundred years ago this month, the Shakespeare and Company bookshop opened its doors for the first time in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. As we celebrate the centennial, the popular story of the shop’s founding is sure to be retold. The origin story of the shop often goes as follows: during the 1920s, Sylvia Beach, a devoted enthusiast for the literary genius of her time, decided to set up shop a few steps from the Luxembourg Gardens. From there, Beach’s biography is often framed as a Cinderella story of Modernism. When James Joyce asked her, an amateur bookseller, to publish Ulysses, and she rose to the occasion, she underwent a transformation from an anonymous shopkeeper into an internationally famous figure. ..."
NYBooks

George Whitman with a group of women at Shakespeare and Company, Paris, 1980

2012 December: Shakespeare and Company, 2016 January: What It's Like to Live Inside the Legendary Paris Bookstore Shakespeare & Co., 2016 September: Shakespeare and Company, Paris - A History of the Rag & Bone Shop of the Heart