Shakespeare and Company
Shakespeare & Company (often abbreviated as Shakespeare & Co. ) is the name of two well-known and historically important bookshops in Paris .
The original Shakespeare & Company
The American Sylvia Beach opened the bookshop Shakespeare & Company for English-language books in 1919 on Rue de l'Odéon opposite the literary bookstore of her (later) partner Adrienne Monnier . The bookstore became a meeting place for many Lost Generation writers - including Ernest Hemingway , F. Scott Fitzgerald , James Joyce and TS Eliot . Shakespeare & Company became famous at the latest with the publication of Ulysses by Sylvia Beach .
After Germany occupied Paris in World War II , Beach closed the store within hours to avoid looting or expropriation after refusing to sell her copy of Finnegans Wake to a German officer . The symbolic liberation by the US soldier Ernest Hemingway in 1944 was not followed by a reopening.
The second Shakespeare & Company
After Beach's death, the American George Whitman (1913–2011) renamed his bookstore Le Mistral in the Rue de la Bûcherie, founded in 1951, to Shakespeare and Company in her honor . The bookstore became an important meeting place for the Beat generation in the 1950s and 1960s . Writers such as Allen Ginsberg , Lawrence Ferlinghetti and William S. Burroughs met here, and Henry Miller was a regular customer. The bookstore is currently run by George Whitman's daughter, Sylvia Whitman.
Trivia
In the American film Before Sunset (2004), Jesse and Celine meet again in the bookstore after Celine learned from the newspaper that Jesse is giving a reading there. The bookstore also served as a location for Woody Allen's feature film Midnight in Paris and Spike Jonze's animated short film Mourir auprès de toi (both 2011).
After the death of George Whitman's white cat Kitty, a stray cat turned up at Shakespeare and Company on Rue de la Bûcherie in the winter of 2015. Since it was first found in the detective fiction section, it was named Aggie (after Agatha Christie ). Aggie can often be found sitting in her leather armchair in the reading room on the first floor.
literature
- Sylvia Beach: Shakespeare and Company. A bookstore in Paris ("Shakespeare & Company", 1959). New edition Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-518-37323-4 (translated by Lilly von Sauter).
- Adrienne Monnier: Notes from the Rue de l'Odéon. Writings 1917–1953 (“Rue de L'Odéon”, 1960). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1998, ISBN 3-518-39359-6 (translated by Nicolas Bornhorn).
Web links
- She didn't write books - but literary history: Sylvia Beach and her legendary bookstore by Alexandra Gridmann, with picture, NZZ December 13, 2019, accessed in December 2019.
- Whitman's bookstore home page
- taz article on Whitman's bookstore
- After the Orange Glow , autobiographical novel (2002) by Mark Spitzer set in Whitman's bookstore (full text)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Spike Jonze: Mourir Auprès de Toi at nowness.com (accessed June 20, 2012).
- ↑ Clare McVay: The Cats Of Paris: French, Feline, Fabulous , December 21, 2016; accessed on April 19, 2018.
- ^ Sara Marzullo: Vivere e lavorare alla Shakespeare & Company , Casa delle Cultura, February 17, 2017; accessed on April 19, 2018.