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Wait wait wait. I had to look this up myself: there exists a bookstore chain in New York City and Philly called Shakespeare & Co? And it appears to have no rel

Wait wait wait. I had to look this up myself: there exists a bookstore chain in New York City and Philly called Shakespeare & Co? And it appears to have no relationship at all with the uberfamous Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris? This is a bit like naming your new restaurant chain "The French Laundry". How could they be allowed to do this?

jhbadger 4y ago
To be fair, even the current Paris-based bookstore of the name isn't the "real" one founded by Sylvia Beach in 1919 (that closed in 1941). I think the various bookstores of the name today do so in honor of Beach's store so they don't really claim ownership of the name.
- SeanLuke 4y ago
  No, that is not at all fair. This wasn't a cold business decision. George Whitman, who founded the current Paris bookstore, and Sylvia Beach, who founded the original, were very close friends. She even toyed with reopening her original shop with him, again under the name Shakespeare and Company. Two years after she died, he renamed his bookstore (Le Mistral) to Shakespeare and Company in her memory in 1964, as he thought that's what she would have liked. He also named his only daughter after her. As it happens, the second Shakespeare and Company also became a hub for authors like Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and many of the Beats. It's the sister shop of City Lights in San Francisco, with a similar author history. Whitman was awarded the Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. His daughter now runs the store. So in Paris there were two Shakespeare and Company bookstores, both extremely famous at different critical times in literary history, whose respective owners were very close, and which were both basically set up the same way. I think it's reasonable to say that they're both the "real" Shakespeare and Company. That's a far cry from the NYC situation.

jhbadger 4y ago

To be fair, even the current Paris-based bookstore of the name isn't the "real" one founded by Sylvia Beach in 1919 (that closed in 1941). I think the various bookstores of the name today do so in honor of Beach's store so they don't really claim ownership of the name.

SeanLuke 4y ago
No, that is not at all fair. This wasn't a cold business decision. George Whitman, who founded the current Paris bookstore, and Sylvia Beach, who founded the original, were very close friends. She even toyed with reopening her original shop with him, again under the name Shakespeare and Company. Two years after she died, he renamed his bookstore (Le Mistral) to Shakespeare and Company in her memory in 1964, as he thought that's what she would have liked. He also named his only daughter after her. As it happens, the second Shakespeare and Company also became a hub for authors like Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and many of the Beats. It's the sister shop of City Lights in San Francisco, with a similar author history. Whitman was awarded the Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. His daughter now runs the store. So in Paris there were two Shakespeare and Company bookstores, both extremely famous at different critical times in literary history, whose respective owners were very close, and which were both basically set up the same way. I think it's reasonable to say that they're both the "real" Shakespeare and Company. That's a far cry from the NYC situation.