SOURCE: Barrineau, Nancy. “Shakespeare and Company.” Pembroke Magazine 34 (2002): 108-14.

In the following essay, Barrineau recounts a visit to a newly-reopened Shakespeare and Company bookshop in Paris, founded this time by George Whitman.

When you enter Shakespeare and Company, the most famous English-language bookstore in Paris, you may see just about anything or anyone. Books spill off the shelves and onto the floor, then from the shop's floor outside onto the front sidewalk. A sleek black cat named Kitty wanders about as if he owns the place. (He is only the latest in a series with the same name, feline replacements for Baskerville, the owner's beloved German Shepherd, who, along with an English tramp named Henry who once stayed here, disappeared suddenly one day.) Photo shoots for movies and advertisements, including one for Christian Dior, are so commonplace that the regular help hardly seem to notice. When I visited...