George Whitman opened his bookshop – first called Le Mistral, later renamed Shakespeare and Company – at 37 rue de la Bûcherie on August 14, 1951. It was a modest space, with no electricity and just three narrow, ground-floor rooms, set one after the other like railroad cars, each no more than 15 feet wide. The shop’s sole window faced out onto the River Seine and Notre-Dame Cathedral. Behind the store were all the marvels of…
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