There are bookshops where you could spend hours ... This is the case with Shakespeare and Co, located a stone's throw from Notre-Dame and which has positioned itself for so long as the temple of English-speaking literature in Paris. Back on the little history of this essential Parisian bookstore! A meeting place for intellectuals In the beginning, it was Sylvia Beach, an American bookseller and publisher, who created the first Shakespeare and Company in 1919. This temple of the book first settled on rue Dupuytren and then at 12 rue de l'Odéon.