Founded by Sylvia Beach in 1919, Shakespeare & Company became a creative hub for expatriate writers including Ernest Hemingway, T.S. The outpouring of loyalty is perhaps unsurprising for the place often described as the world’s most famous independent bookshop.

Indeed, the motto on the shop wall reads: “Be not inhospitable to strangers lest they be angels in disguise.” “(My father) let people sleep in the bookshop and called them ‘tumbleweeds.’ We’ve had 30,000 people sleep in the bookshop,” Whitman said, adding that it was one way the shop founders encouraged writers to be creative. Many Parisians contacted Whitman to donate to the bookshop - without wishing to purchase a book - and to share memories of falling in love there or even sleeping among its bookshelves. Support has come from all walks of life: from lowly students to former French President Francois Hollande, who dropped by the bookshop overlooking Notre Dame Cathedral before the lockdown in response to the appeal. There have been a record 5,000 online orders in one week, compared with around 100 in a normal week - representing a 50-fold increase. Since sending the email appeal, Whitman says she has been “overwhelmed” by the offers of help Shakespeare and Company has received. “We’ve been (down) 80% since the first confinement in March, so at this point we’ve used all our savings,” Sylvia Whitman, daughter of the late proprietor George Whitman, said. 30 that saw all non-essential stores shuttered for the second time in seven months. The English-language bookshop on the Seine River sent an email to customers last week to inform them that it was facing “hard times” and to encourage them to buy a book. PARIS (AP) - Shakespeare and Company, the iconic Paris bookstore that published James Joyce’s “Ulysses” in 1922, is appealing to readers for support after pandemic-linked losses and France’s spring coronavirus lockdown put the future of the Left Bank institution in doubt.

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