SOURCE: Cody, E. Morrill. “Shakespeare and Company—Paris: Successfully Selling English Books on a French Side Street.” Publishers Weekly 12 (12 April 1924): 1261-63.

In the following essay, Cody outlines the arrangement and operation of Shakespeare and Company, the bookshop owned and operated by Sylvia Beach in Paris.

Tucked away in a little narrow street leading up to the Odeon in Paris, hangs a sign on which is painted the head of one Shakespeare, poet and dramatist. Behind the sign is a small American bookshop whose influence on the book-loving people of the Latin quarter and on the English and American writers of Paris, is yearly becoming greater.

“Shakespeare and Company” is the intriguing name that Miss Silvia Beach has given to her library, for she claims there is more real “Shakespeare” in Paris today than there has been in Stratford-on-Avon in a hundred years. Overlooking the bookshelves of her shop...