Paris bookshop which published Ulysses ‘ overwhelmed’ by support

Shakespeare and Company, the Paris bookshop that published James Joyce's Ulysses in 1922, hailed the response following an appeal to readers for support after pandemic- linked losses and France's s p r i n g l o c kd own p u t t h e future of the famous Left Bank institution in doubt.

The English- language bookshop on the River Seine sent an email to customers last week to inform them that it was facing "hard times" and to encourage them to buy a book.

"We've been down 80 per cent since the first confinement i n March, s o at t his point we've used all our savings," said Sylvia Whitman, daughter of the late proprietor George Whitman.

Paris entered another lockdown on October 30 that saw all non- essential stores shut for the second time in seven months.

Ms Whitman said she has been "overwhelmed" by the offers of help Shakespeare and Company has received.

S i n c e l a s t wee k ' s e mai l appeal, the company's website, run by a small team, has been overloaded with book orders and donations.

There have been a recordbreaking 5,000 online orders i n o n e we e k , c o mp a r e d with about 100 in a normal week, representing a 50- fold increase.

S upp o r t has c o me f r o m all walks of life: from lowly students to f ormer French p r e s i d e n t F r a n c o i s H o l - lande, who dropped by the book shop overlooking Notre Dame Cathedral before the lockdown in response to the appeal.,

Many Pari s i ans c ontacted Ms Whitman to donate to the shop – without wishing to purchase a book – and to share memories of falling in love there or even sleeping among its bookshelves.

"My father let people sleep in the bookshop and called them ' tumbleweeds'. We've had 30,000 people sleep in the shop," said Ms Whitman, adding that it was one way the shop founders encouraged writers to be creative. Indeed, the motto on the shop wall reads: "Be not inhospitable to strangers lest they be angels in disguise."

The outpouring of loyalty is perhaps unsurprising for the place often described as one of the world's most famous independent bookshops. Founded by Sylvia Beach in 1919, it became a creative hub f or expatriate writers including Ernest Hemingway, TS Eliot, F Scott Fitzgerald and Joyce.

Reflecting on Beach's decis i o n t o p u b l i s h U l y s s e s , Joyce's ground- breaking novel of more than 700 pages, Ms Whitman said: "No one else dared publish it in full... She became one of the smallest publishers of one of the biggest books of the century." Joyce used to call the store "Stratford- upon- Odeon", merging the shop's street address with Shakespeare's birthplace.

The Irish writer would use it as an office.

"They all used her bookshop as a sanctuary," Ms Whitman said.

During the Second World War, Beach allegedly closed Shakespeare and Company in 1941 after refusing to sell her last copy of Joyce's Finnegans Wake to a German Nazi officer.

The bookstore reopened in a different guise in 1951, with new owner – George Whitman.