BOOK FORMAT Hardcover, 6.25 x 9.5 in. / 384 pgs / 225 color.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 9/27/2016 Active
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: FALL 2016 p. 7
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9791096101009TRADE List Price: $34.95 CAD $45.95 GBP £24.95
AVAILABILITY Out of stock
TERRITORY WORLD
"delectable eye candy for lovers of books and reading.... an exuberant celebration of a bookstore" Publishers Weekly
SHAKESPEARE AND COMPANY PARIS
Shakespeare and Company, Paris
A History of the Rag & Bone Shop of the Heart
Edited with introduction by Krista Halverson. Foreword by Jeanette Winterson. Epilogue by Sylvia Whitman.
A copiously illustrated account of the famed Paris bookstore on its 65th anniversary
This first-ever history of the legendary bohemian bookstore in Paris interweaves essays and poetry from dozens of writers associated with the shop--Allen Ginsberg, Anaïs Nin, Ethan Hawke, Robert Stone and Jeanette Winterson, among others--with hundreds of never-before-seen archival pieces, including photographs of James Baldwin, William Burroughs and Langston Hughes, plus a foreword by the celebrated British novelist Jeanette Winterson and an epilogue by Sylvia Whitman, the daughter of the store’s founder, George Whitman. The book has been edited by Krista Halverson, director of the newly founded Shakespeare and Company publishing house.
George Whitman opened his bookstore in a tumbledown 16th-century building just across the Seine from Notre-Dame in 1951, a decade after the original Shakespeare and Company had closed. Run by Sylvia Beach, it had been the meeting place for the Lost Generation and the first publisher of James Joyce’s Ulysses. (This book includes an illustrated adaptation of Beach’s memoir.) Since Whitman picked up the mantle, Shakespeare and Company has served as a home-away-from-home for many celebrated writers, from Jorge Luis Borges to Ray Bradbury, A.M. Homes to Dave Eggers, as well as for young authors and poets. Visitors are invited not only to read the books in the library and to share a pot of tea, but sometimes also to live in the bookstore itself--all for free.
More than 30,000 people have stayed at Shakespeare and Company, fulfilling Whitman’s vision of a “socialist utopia masquerading as a bookstore.” Through the prism of the shop’s history, the book traces the lives of literary expats in Paris from 1951 to the present, touching on the Beat Generation, civil rights, May ’68 and the feminist movement--all while pondering that perennial literary question, “What is it about writers and Paris?”
Krista Halverson is the director of Shakespeare and Company bookstore’s publishing venture. Previously, she was the managing editor of Zoetrope: All-Story, the art and literary quarterly published by Francis Ford Coppola, which has won several National Magazine Awards for Fiction and numerous design prizes. She was responsible for the magazine’s art direction, working with guest designers including Lou Reed, Kara Walker, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Zaha Hadid, Wim Wenders and Tom Waits, among others.
Jeanette Winterson's first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, was published in 1985. In 1992 she was one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists. She has won numerous awards and is published around the world. Her memoir, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, was an international bestseller. Her latest novel, The Gap of Time, is a "cover version" of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale.
Sylvia Whitman is the owner of Shakespeare and Company bookstore, which her father opened in 1951. She took on management of the shop in 2004, when she was 23, and now co-manages the bookstore with her partner, David Delannet. Together they have opened an adjoining cafe, as well as launched a literary festival, a contest for unpublished novellas and a publishing arm.
Featured image is reproduced from Shakespeare and Company, Paris.
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
Another Magazine
Now, much to the delight of its many customers and occasional tenants, the shop’s history has been compiled into a book all of its own, entitled Shakespeare and Company Paris: A History of the Rag & Bone Shop of the Heart – a satisfyingly weighty hardback tome which places poetry, handwritten notes and even music scores side by side with biography and literary extracts in a chronological order so charming that it hardly seems possible that it can be so extensive.
Lit Hub
Kate Layte
It’s gritty, indulgent, wild, perfect and pure inspiration. A must-have for anyone who believes in the power of the independent bookstore.
Publishers Weekly
This profusely illustrated 65th-anniversary tribute to Shakespeare and Company, the renowned Left Bank bookstore and mecca for 20th-century literati, is delectable eye candy for lovers of books and reading.
Harper's Bazaar
Erica Wagner
Edited with love with Krista Halverson, [this] is the nearest thing you'll get to this wonderful book shop on Paris' Left Bank without actually crossing the Channel... Order the book and that will tide you over until your next- or your first- visit.
Lithub
A new history on one of the world's great bookshops.
Boston Globe
Jan Gardner
To call Shakespeare and Company a bookstore doesn't do it justice. The Paris landmark is a literary salon and an unconventional hotel where guests, called Tumbleweeds, help run the shop. Now the English-language bookstore has published its first title. Shakespeare and Company, Paris: A History of the Rag & Bone Shop of the Heart, a glorious volume thick with old photographs, newspaper clippings, and reminiscences. Many celebrated writers including James Baldwin, Allen Ginsberg, and Anais Nin considered the shop their home away from home.
Shelf Awareness
Shannon McKenna Schmidt
Drawing on never-before-seen archives, it's the first book to share the full story of the legendary shop founded by Whitman's late father, George, an American expat, in 1951. A decade-by-decade narrative is interwoven with photographs, newspaper articles, poems, diary entries, and reminiscences by Allen Ginsberg, Anaïs Nin, Ian Rankin, Ethan Hawke, and others who have crossed the threshold of this literary landmark.
Washington Post
James McAuley
Shakespeare and Company, the small, crumbling bookshop on Paris's Left Bank, may be the most famous bookstore in the world... Conceived as a 'memoir' instead of a history, the project is essentially a rigorous attempt to explain what, exactly, Shakespeare and Company is.
OUT Magazine
Michael Valinsky
With a community over 65 years old comes a great history and an even greater archive... Shakespeare and Company, Paris: A History of the Rag & Bone Shop of the Heart not only examines the bookstore's presence within the city over time, but features works by acclaimed artists associated with the site, like Allen Ginsberg, Anaïs Nin, Ethan Hawke, Robert Stone and Jeanette Winterson, among others.
The Millions
Kelsey Ford
...the biography reads like a multi-faceted oral history and is told in many layers: colored photographs, tumbleweed biographies, recountings from former employees and writers-in-residence. The story it tells is as varied, unique, and romantic as the shop is.
Newsday
...affectionate tribute...makes you long to live la vie bohème in Paris.
The Guardian
An English-language bookshop founded by George Whitman on the banks of the Seine in Paris has been hosting writers and selling the occasional book for 65 years. Krista Halverson explores the history of a countercultural institution and the legacy of Sylvia Beach.
Lithub
Buzz Poole
Even if you have never entered Shakespeare and Company, this book evokes redolent mustiness, the creaking and crinking of readers shifting in their chairs, the sound of iconic authors turning pages as they read to a rapt audience. It is the familiarity of imagination transporting you to times and places you may or may not have been, and in doing so a sense of this place’s personality becomes undeniably present, so much so that you might feel you were there too when Italo Calvino and Pablo Neruda drank wine from empty tuna tins.
Hyperallergic
Liberty N. Megan
With a wealth of archival documents and photographs from Whitman’s collection, and first-hand accounts of encounters and stays at the shop by visitors and residents specifically collected for this publication, the book is a memoir of a place with a magical and warm personality all its own.
STATUS: Out of stock
Temporarily out of stock pending additional inventory.
In celebration of Shakespeare and Company, Paris: A History of the Rag & Bone Shop of the Heart, the first fully-documented "memoir" of George Whitman's eccentric English-language bookstore on the Left Bank of the Seine, we present this video, directed by Lisa Paclet, from the store's archives - a tiny selection of the more than 30,000 artists and writers who have stayed at the store as "Tumbleweeds" over the last 65 years. continue to blog
The editor of the magnificent new 384-page illustrated history of the legendary Paris literary bookstore (and home-away-from-home to decades of expatriate writers and cultural figures) contributes a text on the making of a book which had to be gotten right, whose archive never stops growing, and whose motto, inscribed above the library door in the rue de la Bûcherie store founder George Whitman's own hand, reads, "Be not inhospitable to strangers lest they be angels in disguise." continue to blog
"delectable eye candy for lovers of books and reading.... an exuberant celebration of a bookstore" -- Publishers Weekly
In 1919, Princetonian Sylvia Beach opened a little English-language bookshop in Paris. Named Shakespeare and Company, it was home-away-from home to Hemingway, Joyce, Stein and Fitzgerald, among others, until it was shuttered in 1941 by the Nazis. A decade later, fellow American George Whitman opened his own store under another name, inviting writers to eat, sleep and work there in the spirit of true literary obsession. When Beach attended a reading there in 1958, she was so inspired that she gave Whitman her name, and to this day, the store remains a site of devout pilgrimage. Allen Ginsberg, James Baldwin, Anaïs Nin, Jackie Kennedy and William Burroughs were just a few of the early regulars. The complete story of this legendary Left Bank bookstore is told from the inside in the new, copiously illustrated and critically acclaimed "memoir," Shakespeare and Company, Paris: A History of the Rag & Bone Shop of the Heart. Whitman is pictured here outside the store in the 1950s. Read Jeanette Winterson's Foreword on LitHub and Publishers Weekly's Starred Review. continue to blog
"delectable eye candy for lovers of books and reading.... an exuberant celebration of a bookstore" -- Publishers Weekly
Question: Can an overstuffed, underfunded, independent overseas bookstore be glamorous? Answer: Yes. Read the blueprint in Shakespeare and Company, Paris: A History of the Rag & Bone Shop of the Heart, the magnificent first illustrated history of the legendary Paris institution-cum-literary-flophouse. Drawn from a century's worth of never-before-seen archives, with more than 200 color reproductions, fascinating ephemera and original writing by Jeanette Winterson, Nathan Englander, Ethan Hawke, Ian Rankin and many more, this book is already the year's best known antidote to internet-age, consumer-culture malaise. "I created this bookstore like a man would write a novel," founder George Whitman is quoted, "building each room like a chapter, and I like people to open the door the way they open a book, a book that leads into a magic world in their imaginations." Read Jeanette Winterson's Foreword on LitHub and Publishers Weekly's Starred Review. Pictured here, "Tumbleweeds" reading in the library, where benches double as beds at night, and a signed photograph from James Baldwin. continue to blog
"I live for the day when I'll have a bookstore to embellish this workaday world. I now own one of the best private libraries in the Latin Quarter and, living as I do on less than a dollar a day, I have accumulated a small capital augmented by English lessons and occasional book sales. I've talked with Sylvia Beach, the daughter of a minister from Princeton, New Jersey, who started a bookstore in Paris that became the rendezvous of Andé Gide, James Joyce, and the most famous writers of Europe. There is a possibility that she would consent to go into business with me—although I've been avoiding offers of partnership, it would be an honor and a privilege to work with Sylvia Beach, should she decide to re-open Shakespeare and Company. Either way, I hope finally to have a niche where I can safely look upon the world's horror and beauty." – George Whitman, Spring 1950, Paris continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 6.25 x 9.5 in. / 384 pgs / 225 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $34.95 LIST PRICE: CANADA $45.95 GBP £24.95 ISBN: 9791096101009 PUBLISHER: Shakespeare and Company Paris AVAILABLE: 9/27/2016 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: Out of stock TERRITORY: WORLD
Shakespeare and Company, Paris A History of the Rag & Bone Shop of the Heart
Published by Shakespeare and Company Paris. Edited with introduction by Krista Halverson. Foreword by Jeanette Winterson. Epilogue by Sylvia Whitman.
A copiously illustrated account of the famed Paris bookstore on its 65th anniversary
This first-ever history of the legendary bohemian bookstore in Paris interweaves essays and poetry from dozens of writers associated with the shop--Allen Ginsberg, Anaïs Nin, Ethan Hawke, Robert Stone and Jeanette Winterson, among others--with hundreds of never-before-seen archival pieces, including photographs of James Baldwin, William Burroughs and Langston Hughes, plus a foreword by the celebrated British novelist Jeanette Winterson and an epilogue by Sylvia Whitman, the daughter of the store’s founder, George Whitman. The book has been edited by Krista Halverson, director of the newly founded Shakespeare and Company publishing house.
George Whitman opened his bookstore in a tumbledown 16th-century building just across the Seine from Notre-Dame in 1951, a decade after the original Shakespeare and Company had closed. Run by Sylvia Beach, it had been the meeting place for the Lost Generation and the first publisher of James Joyce’s Ulysses. (This book includes an illustrated adaptation of Beach’s memoir.) Since Whitman picked up the mantle, Shakespeare and Company has served as a home-away-from-home for many celebrated writers, from Jorge Luis Borges to Ray Bradbury, A.M. Homes to Dave Eggers, as well as for young authors and poets. Visitors are invited not only to read the books in the library and to share a pot of tea, but sometimes also to live in the bookstore itself--all for free.
More than 30,000 people have stayed at Shakespeare and Company, fulfilling Whitman’s vision of a “socialist utopia masquerading as a bookstore.” Through the prism of the shop’s history, the book traces the lives of literary expats in Paris from 1951 to the present, touching on the Beat Generation, civil rights, May ’68 and the feminist movement--all while pondering that perennial literary question, “What is it about writers and Paris?”
Krista Halverson is the director of Shakespeare and Company bookstore’s publishing venture. Previously, she was the managing editor of Zoetrope: All-Story, the art and literary quarterly published by Francis Ford Coppola, which has won several National Magazine Awards for Fiction and numerous design prizes. She was responsible for the magazine’s art direction, working with guest designers including Lou Reed, Kara Walker, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Zaha Hadid, Wim Wenders and Tom Waits, among others.
Jeanette Winterson's first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, was published in 1985. In 1992 she was one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists. She has won numerous awards and is published around the world. Her memoir, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, was an international bestseller. Her latest novel, The Gap of Time, is a "cover version" of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale.
Sylvia Whitman is the owner of Shakespeare and Company bookstore, which her father opened in 1951. She took on management of the shop in 2004, when she was 23, and now co-manages the bookstore with her partner, David Delannet. Together they have opened an adjoining cafe, as well as launched a literary festival, a contest for unpublished novellas and a publishing arm.
