Sylvia Beach’s bookshop in Paris was called Shakespeare and Company. It opened in 1919 and was located on the Rue Dupuytren in the St.-Germain-des-Prés quarter. The shop became a gathering place for expatriate writers and artists of the Lost Generation. During the German occupation of Paris in World War II, her shop closed (1941), and she was interned by the Germans for several months in 1943.
In 1951 American bookseller George Whitman opened a store, Le Mistral, on the Left Bank directly opposite the Notre-Dame Cathedral. In April 1964 he renamed the store Shakespeare and Company in honor of the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s birth and of Beach’s former store