Two shops, three addresses, one name — the bookstore that published Ulysses, and the one that took up the torch.
Was the bookstore by Notre-Dame the same Shakespeare and Company that published Ulysses? Not literally — and the honest answer is the whole story. The name belongs to two historically distinct Paris bookshops, run by different owners at different addresses in different half-centuries, connected not by a lease but by a deliberate act of cultural inheritance. This page is the map; each of the three addresses has its own full page here.
Be not inhospitable to strangers, lest they be angels in disguise.
The first business was Sylvia Beach's, and it lived at two addresses: the tiny first shop at 8 rue Dupuytren (1919–1921), and then the legendary 12 rue de l'Odéon (1921–1941), opposite her partner Adrienne Monnier's French bookshop. It lent the Lost Generation its education, published Ulysses in 1922 when no commercial house would, and closed for good under the Occupation in 1941 — Beach's company ended there, and never reopened.
The second business began in 1951, when George Whitman opened Le Mistral at 37 rue de la Bûcherie, facing Notre-Dame across the Seine — the Beat Generation's Paris living room, with beds among the shelves for writers. Beach announced at a 1958 dinner that she was handing him her shop's name, and in 1964 — after her death, on Shakespeare's four-hundredth birthday — Le Mistral became Shakespeare and Company. That shop is open today under his daughter Sylvia Whitman, named for Beach: a successor by blessing, not by lease, and the single best place on earth to stand inside this catalog.
8 rue Dupuytren, 6th arr.
Beach's first, tiny storefront.
Visit the place
12 rue de l'Odéon, 6th arr.
The legendary address — lending library, Ulysses headquarters, and the era's clubhouse.
Visit the place
37 rue de la Bûcherie, 5th arr.
The separate successor business — Whitman's shop (Le Mistral until 1964), facing Notre-Dame across the Seine.
Visit the placeSylvia Beach opens Shakespeare and Company on the rue Dupuytren as a bookshop and lending library.
The shop moves to 12 rue de l'Odéon, opposite Adrienne Monnier's La Maison des Amis des Livres.
Beach publishes James Joyce's Ulysses when no commercial house will touch it.
The shop closes under the Occupation — the stock hidden overnight, the legend says, after Beach refuses a German officer her last Finnegans Wake.
Hemingway, arriving with the Liberation, personally 'liberates' the rue de l'Odéon.
George Whitman opens Le Mistral at 37 rue de la Bûcherie, a former monastery building facing Notre-Dame.
At a dinner party, Beach hands Whitman the name for his shop.
After Beach's death, on Shakespeare's 400th birthday, Le Mistral becomes Shakespeare and Company.
George Whitman dies at 98 in the flat above the shop; his daughter Sylvia Whitman carries it on.
Founder, first shop (1919–1941)
Bookseller, lender, and — for one heroic book — publisher. The Lost Generation's librarian.
Visit their pagePartner & neighbor
Ran the French bookshop across the street; the two stores made the rue de l'Odéon literature's main street.
Visit their pageFounder, second shop (1951–2011)
The ex-serviceman who reopened the idea a decade after the war closed it, and housed 30,000 writers in the stacks.
Visit their page
Owner (2011–present)
Whitman's daughter, named for Beach — the inheritance made literal.
Published by the first shop itself — a bookstore doing what the entire English-language publishing industry wouldn't.
Contains the era's love letter to Beach and her lending library — 'no one that I ever knew was nicer to me.'
On our shelves
The little magazine run from the second shop that first published Samuel Beckett in English.
The shop's own history, built from the Tumbleweed archive and Whitman's Depression-era journals.
Operated at · 1921–1941
The shop's legendary premises at 12 rue de l'Odéon, opposite Adrienne Monnier's La Maison des Amis des Livres — its home from 1921 until the Occupation closed it. Beach's first storefront (1919–21) was around the corner at 8 rue Dupuytren.
Succeeded by · 1964
Beach announced the gift of the name at a 1958 dinner; after her death, Whitman renamed Le Mistral on Shakespeare's 400th birthday in 1964. Separate ownership, deliberate continuity.
Operated at · 1919–1921
The first premises: the tiny shop around the corner from the rue de l'Odéon where Beach opened on 19 November 1919, before the move to the larger rooms at No. 12 in 1921.
Published · 1922-02
Sylvia Beach publishes James Joyce's Ulysses on 2 February 1922, after every commercial publisher in the English-speaking world refused it — the first copies delivered on Joyce's fortieth birthday.
Founded by · 1919
Sylvia Beach opens Shakespeare and Company in November 1919 as an English-language bookshop and lending library, from 1921 at 12 rue de l'Odéon.
The sources below include institutional histories, archival materials, scholarly research, and primary records that informed this page. They document Shakespeare and Company, the people connected to it, and its cultural history.
First-person evidence and historical context used in preparing the Shakespeare and Company page.
Web source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the Shakespeare and Company page.
Biographical evidence used to verify chronology, relationships, and historical context connected to Shakespeare and Company.
Archival evidence used to document the historical record connected to Shakespeare and Company.
These references provide the documented foundation for this organization's history and context. Claim-level citations remain attached to the specific claims they support.
Explore more resources
Jack Kahane's English-language press printed the banned books of the 1930s from Paris — Tropic of Cancer first among them — funding the masterpieces with cheerful smut.
Visit the page
Ford Madox Ford's monthly ran for exactly one year from a Paris quai — and published Joyce, Stein, Hemingway, Rhys, and Barnes on its way out the door.
Visit the page
The American publisher of the 1920s expatriates. Scribner's had Henry James and Edith Wharton before it had Fitzgerald and Hemingway, and it kept them all through one long editorial tenure.
Visit the pageThe Paris review and publishing house founded by Alioune Diop in 1947, with Richard Wright on its founding patronage committee. It became the intellectual home of Négritude, organized the 1956 Congress of Black Writers and Artists at the Sorbonne, and still runs its bookshop at 25 bis rue des Écoles.
Visit the pageThe Friday Letter
Presses, magazines, bookshops, and the writers who haunted them — one story from the Paris ecosystem in every letter.
