George Whitman

George Whitman is the proprietor of the acclaimed Shakespeare and Co. bookstore in Paris, and is a former contemporary of such Beat poets as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. He claims to be a grandson of American icon Walt Whitman, but others have questioned this. He allows young travellers to stay in the residential quarters of his rue de la Bucherie premises, in exchange for two hours' work in the bookshop each day. He was born in Salem, Massachusetts, and although his exact age is undisclosed, he is known to have been born before 1915, and perhaps as early as 1910.

Related Topics:
Shakespeare and Co. - Bookstore - Paris - Beat - Jack Kerouac - Allen Ginsberg - Walt Whitman - Salem, Massachusetts - 1915 - 1910

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Whitman founded the bookstore in the 1950s, and named it after Sylvia Beach's earlier Paris bookstore "Shakespeare and Company". Whitman's store had a rocky history—he did not register or pay taxes for many years. Like many other artists in trouble with Internal Revenue, he was saved by André Malraux.

Related Topics:
1950s - Sylvia Beach - André Malraux

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The present shop Shakespeare and Company at 37 rue de la Bûcherie in Paris, was opened in 1951 by George Whitman with an inheritance from his aunt. He called the shop Le Mistral after his first French girlfriend. From the very first night he allowed travellers, young writers, poets and artists to lodge in exchange with a hand in cleaning the shop. Sylvia Beach, whose famous shop was on 12 rue de l'Odéon, was still in Paris and came to Le Mistral to see the writers of the new generation, who Anais Nin called Xerox artists, read aloud their new work. Whitman modeled his shop after Sylvia Beach's bookshop. The only free lending library in Paris, the Beats who arrived at the Beat Hotel on rue Git-le-Coeur quickly found their way to the small bookshop and made a place for themselves there. In 1962, Sylvia Beach died, leaving in her will a good deal of her private books and the rights to the name Shakespeare and Company to George Whitman. In 1964, the name was changed to Shakespeare and Company and Whitman named his daughter after his bibliophilic predecessor, Sylvia Beach Whitman, who today runs the shop with her father.

Related Topics:
Sylvia Beach - Anais Nin - Beats - Beat Hotel

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