Shakespeare and Company (rue de la Bûcherie)

George Whitman opened the shop in 1951 under the name Le Mistral, across the Seine from Notre-Dame. It was not a continuation of Sylvia Beach's prewar business: Whitman founded and owned it independently, then deliberately adopted her celebrated name in April 1964 with her blessing.

The shop worked as more than a bookseller. Whitman offered beds among the shelves to travelling writers and readers in exchange for help in the store, daily reading, and a short autobiography for the archive. He called these guests “Tumbleweeds,” and the practice made 37 rue de la Bûcherie an unusually durable successor to the expatriate book culture associated with the original Shakespeare and Company.

Its readings and visitors joined several generations of literary Paris: Beat writers, postwar expatriates, and later novelists all passed through the rooms. The shop's own institutional history records visits by figures including Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Durrell, Anaïs Nin, and James Baldwin without confusing their presence with formal employment or membership.

Whitman's daughter Sylvia Whitman began managing the shop in the early 2000s and has owned it since his death in 2011. The business continues at the same address, with its lodging program, events, publishing projects, and archives extending the social role Whitman built around the books.