Virus-hit Paris bookshop Shakespeare & Co appeals for help
Shakespeare and Company, the iconic Paris bookstore that published James Joyce’s “Ulysses” in 1922, is appealing to readers for support after pandemic-linked losses and France’s spring coronavirus lockdown put the future of the Left Bank institution in doubt.
The English-language bookshop on the Seine River sent an email to customers last week to inform them that it was facing “hard times“and to encourage them to buy a book. Paris entered a fresh lockdown on Oct. 30 that saw all non-essential stores shuttered for the second time in seven months.
“We’ve been (down) 80 percent since the first confinement in March, so at this point we’ve used all our savings,” Sylvia Whitman, daughter of the late proprietor George Whitman, said.
Since sending the email appeal, Whitman says she has been “overwhelmed” by the offers of help Shakespeare and Company has received.
Support has come from all walks of life: from lowly students to former French President Francois Hollande, who dropped by the bookshop overlooking Notre Dame Cathedral before the lockdown in response to the appeal.
Many Parisians contacted Whitman to donate to the bookshop — without wishing to purchase a book — and to share memories of falling in love there or even sleeping among its bookshelves.
The outpouring of loyalty is perhaps unsurprising for the place often described as the world’s most famous independent bookshop. Founded by Sylvia Beach in 1919, Shakespeare & Company became a creative hub for expatriate writers including Ernest Hemingway, T.S. Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and James Joyce.
Reflecting on Beach’s decision to publish “Ulysses,” Joyce’s groundbreaking novel of more than 700 pages, 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.”