CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 9/21/2016

Shakespeare and Company, Paris: A History of the Rag & Bone Shop of the Heart

"delectable eye candy for lovers of books and reading.... an exuberant celebration of a bookstore"
-- Publishers Weekly

In 1919, Princetonian Sylvia Beach opened a little English-language bookshop in Paris. Named Shakespeare and Company, it was home-away-from home to Hemingway, Joyce, Stein and Fitzgerald, among others, until it was shuttered in 1941 by the Nazis. A decade later, fellow American George Whitman opened his own store under another name, inviting writers to eat, sleep and work there in the spirit of true literary obsession. When Beach attended a reading there in 1958, she was so inspired that she gave Whitman her name, and to this day, the store remains a site of devout pilgrimage. Allen Ginsberg, James Baldwin, Anaïs Nin, Jackie Kennedy and William Burroughs were just a few of the early regulars. The complete story of this legendary Left Bank bookstore is told from the inside in the new, copiously illustrated and critically acclaimed "memoir," Shakespeare and Company, Paris: A History of the Rag & Bone Shop of the Heart. Whitman is pictured here outside the store in the 1950s. Read Jeanette Winterson's Foreword on LitHub and Publishers Weekly's Starred Review.