Shakespeare and Company

Shakespeare and Company is an independent bookstore located in the 5th arrondissement, in Paris's Left Bank. Shakespeare and Company serves as both a bookstore and a lending library, specializing in English-language literature. The upstairs also serves as a makeshift dormitory for travelers, known as "tumbleweeds," who earn their keep by working in the shop for a couple of hours each day. The current store is not to be confused with Sylvia Beach's original Shakespeare & Co., which was a meeting place for such luminaries as Joyce, Hemingway, Antheil, et al (The current store appropriated Beach's name upon the lady's death in 1962--not of her own volition). One suspects that the new store does, however, retain much of the same feel as Beach's original.