Bonjour!
For this installment of Bookstores Around the World with Julie Valerie, we’re traveling to Paris, France, the most visited capital city in the world.
For the geography lovers in the Bookish Road Trip community: Paris is positioned on a depression hollowed out by the Seine River and is located on what is referred to as a “north-bending arc” of the river, a river whose name derives from the Latin “sequana” or “snake.” Paris includes two islands: the Île Saint-Louis and the larger Île de la Cité. Downstream from Paris, the Seine river’s mouth opens on the English Channel.
Known worldwide for its haute cuisine, fashion, and iconic landmarks. The list of Parisian authors seems endless (Victor Hugo, Voltaire, Jules Verne), and literary tourism thrives.
Today’s post will highlight literary museums, libraries (bibliothèques), and booksellers.
Let’s get started.
3 MUST-VISIT LITERARY MUSEUMS
Three literary museums you don’t want to miss:
Maison de Balzac
47, rue Raynouard
75016 Paris, France
Tél +33 1 55 74 41 80
Musée Carnavalet
23, rue de Sévigné
75003 Paris, France
Tél : +33 1 44 59 58 58
Maison Victor Hugo
6 Pl. des Vosges
75004 Paris, France
Tél : +33 1 42 72 10 16
LIBRARIES IN PARIS: 8 Bibliothèques and the largest English-language lending library on the European continent: The American Library in Paris
The libraries in Paris are quite beautiful and possess fascinating history. I’m planning to write a separate post about them at a later date.
Until then, here’s my list of 8 Parisian bibliothèques every library lover will adore:
– Bibliothèque Mazarine
– Bibliothèque Richelieu-Louvois
– Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal
– Bibliothèque Forney
– Bibliothèque Publique d’Information
– Bibliothèque Sainte Geneviève
– Bibliothèque François Mitterand
– Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris
THE AMERICAN LIBRARY IN PARIS
Though we love the beautiful French language, English-speaking travelers might enjoy browsing the stacks of The Amerian Library in Paris. According to their website, the library was “established in 1920 under the auspices of the American Library Association with a core collection of books and periodicals donated by American libraries to United States armed forces personnel serving their allies in World War I. The Library has grown since then into the largest English-language lending library on the European continent.”
The American Library in Paris
10, rue du Général Camou
75007 Paris, France
Tél : +33 1 53 59 12 60
14 BOOKSTORES IN PARIS YOU DON’T WANT TO MISS
Paris has so many interesting and downright gorgeous booksellers, that it’s impossible to cover them all in one post. Below are fourteen booksellers awaiting you on your next adventure to this beautiful city.
My favorites are the bouquinistes along the Seine and Shakespeare and Company, a very special place, a place I almost called my temporary home (yes, writers living and sleeping beneath the stacks – more on that below), but instead, I returned to the United States to be with the man I now call my husband.
Read further!
I hope you enjoy.
—Julie
More from the Bookstores Around the World column:
Edinburgh, Scotland: 19 Must-Visit Bookstores in Edinburgh, Scotland: Bookish Road Trip travel to the world’s first UNESCO “City of Literature”
Paris, France: A Bibliophile in Paris: 14 Bookstores, 9 Libraries, and 3 Literary Museums You Don’t Want to Miss
Sydney, Australia: Literature Lovers in Sydney, Australia: Book Fair Australia, Writing Festivals, True Crime “BAD” things, and 6 Bookstores You Don’t Want to Miss!
Atlanta, Georgia USA: A Book Lover’s Atlanta: DragonCon, National Book Club Conference, and 12 Must-Visit Atlanta Bookstores
Houston, Texas USA: Houston Literary Events and Bookstores: Where to Find Your Next Great Read in H-Town
Hong Kong: Book Lovers Visiting Hong Kong: Enjoy these Bookstores and English-language Art & Literary Attractions
Memphis, Tennessee USA: Mid-South Book Festival + 7 Must-Visit Memphis Bookstores
LES BOUQUINISTES – << click this title to browse and shop offerings
On the sidewalks along the Seine are several hundred bouquinistes, those iconic treasure boxes painted Paris-green, each with a number painted in white, where postcards, posters, used, antiquarian, and classic works of literature await. Some of my favorite memories of my times in Paris involve countless hours perusing les bouquinistes, a tea and chocolate croissant in my hands.
BOOKOFF – three locations; Japanese-language and cultural objects
BOOKOFF CHATELET
9 Rue Saint-Martin
75004 Paris, France
Tél : +33 1 40 29 90 68
BOOKOFF QUATRE-SEPTEMBRE
11 Rue Monsigny
75002 Paris, France
Tél : +33 1 42 65 79 73
BOOKOFF
90 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine
75012 Paris, France
Tél : +33 1 44 87 91 14
From their website:
In France, the first BOOKOFF store dedicated solely to Japanese-language products opened in 2004 in the Opéra district of Paris. The brand developed in the French market by creating the Quatre-Septembre store in 2007, then in 2009, the Faubourg Saint-Antoine store near Bastille opened. These two additional shops are devoted to cultural articles in French.
LIBRAIRIE GALIGNANI
224 Rue de Rivoli
75001 Paris, France
Tél : +33 1 42 60 76 07
LIBRAIRIE JOUSSEAUME
45-46-47 Gal Vivienne
75002 Paris, France
Tél : +33 1 42 96 06 24
From their website:
The Jousseaume bookstore offers works dating from the 19th and 20th centuries: literature, history, poetry, illustrated books, theatre, music, varia… The bookstore also offers some prints and engravings as well as an outdoor display with paperbacks and sale books. Possibility of rental for photos, filming, signatures, and other events.
LIBRAIRIE-BOUTIQUE DU MUSÉE DU LOUVRE
Allée du Grand Louvre
75001 Paris, France
Tél : +33 1 58 65 14 00
This is the bookstore at the Louvre. Here you will find a wide selection of books, art objects, and products derived from the collections and exhibitions shown in the museum. A great place for picking up souvenirs and gift items.
SAN FRANCISCO BOOK COMPANY
17 Rue Monsieur le Prince
75006 Paris, France
Tél : +33 1 43 29 15 70
From their website:
Founded in 1997, San Francisco Book Company is an English-language bookshop located in the Odeon area of the Left Bank in Paris.
We offer a wide range of books, including hardcover, paperback, and pocketbook fiction, first editions, mysteries, science fiction, academic, esoteric, and collectible titles on a wide variety of subjects: history, art, science, philosophy, religion, humanities, theater, music, film, food, children’s, etc. Our inventory is all used, but we get recently published stuff in all the time.
SHAKESPEARE AND COMPANY << This is the bookstore I mentioned above. A bookstore I almost called my temporary home.
37 Rue de la Bûcherie
75005 Paris, France
Tél : +33 1 43 25 40 93
From their website:
From the first day the store opened, writers, artists, and intellectuals were invited to sleep among the shop’s shelves and piles of books, on small beds that doubled as benches during the day. Since then, an estimated 30,000 young and young-at-heart writers and artists have stayed in the bookshop, including then unknowns such as Alan Sillitoe, Robert Stone, Kate Grenville, Sebastian Barry, Ethan Hawke, Jeet Thayil, Darren Aronfsky, Geoffrey Rush, and David Rakoff. These guests are called Tumbleweeds after the rolling thistles that “drift in and out with the winds of chance,” as George described. A sense of community and commune was very important to him—he referred to his shop as a “socialist utopia masquerading as a bookstore.”
Three things are asked of each Tumbleweed: read a book a day, help at the shop for a few hours a day, and produce a one-page autobiography. Thousands and thousands of these autobiographies have been collected and now form an impressive archive, capturing generations of writers, travelers, and dreamers who have left behind pieces of their stories.
Shakespeare and Company is an English-language bookshop in the heart of Paris, on the banks of the Seine, opposite Notre-Dame. Since opening in 1951, it’s been a meeting place for anglophone writers and readers, becoming a Left Bank literary institution.
The bookshop was founded by American George Whitman at 37 rue de la Bûcherie, Kilometer Zero, the point at which all French roads begin. Constructed in the early 17th century, the building was originally a monastery, La Maison du Mustier. George liked to pretend he was the sole surviving monk, saying, “In the Middle Ages, each monastery had a frère lampier, a monk whose duty was to light the lamps at nightfall. I’m the frère lampier here now. It’s the modest role I play.”
When the store first opened, it was called Le Mistral. George changed it to the present name in April 1964—on the four-hundredth anniversary of William Shakespeare’s birth—in honor of a bookseller he admired, Sylvia Beach, who’d founded the original Shakespeare and Company in 1919. Her store at 12 rue de l’Odéon was a gathering place for the great expat writers of the time—Joyce, Hemingway, Stein, Fitzgerald, Eliot, Pound—as well as for leading French writers.
Through his bookstore, George Whitman endeavored to carry on the spirit of Beach’s shop, and it quickly became a center for expat literary life in Paris. Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Anaïs Nin, Richard Wright, William Styron, Julio Cortázar, Henry Miller, William Saroyan, Lawrence Durrell, James Jones, and James Baldwin were among early visitors to the shop.
TASCHEN
2 rue de Buci
75006 Paris, France
Tél : +33 1 40 51 79 22
From their website:
Located on Rue de Buci in the heart of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, TASCHEN Paris was the publishing house’s first branded store. Once the center of literary life in Paris, the store’s opening helped honor the area’s long intellectual history of housing the city’s publishing scene. Designed by Philippe Starck, the space is elegant, minimal and perfectly curated, and has hosted some of TASCHEN’s most popular events, including book signings with Peter Lindbergh, Ellen von Unwerth, Sebastião Salgado, Peter Beard, Bettina Rheims and Renzo Piano.
ABBEY BOOKSHOP – two locations
ABBEY BOOKSHOP
29 rue de la Parcheminerie
75005, Paris, France
Tél : +33 1 46 33 16 24
ABBEY BOOKSHOP – RIVE DROITE
38bis Boulevard Beaumarchais
75011 Paris, France
Tél : +33 1 46 33 75 00
From their website:
In 1989, Brian Spence, who hails from Toronto, crossed the Atlantic to bring his Abbey Bookshop to an international audience. The Abbey Bookshop in Paris’s Latin Quarter has for the last twenty years become a cultural epicenter for Canadians, Anglophones, and Anglophiles from all corners of the world. Although we offer a wide variety of Canadian books, the main attraction is an eclectic collection of over 40,000 titles in English ranging from scholarly to popular literature.
The shop sits on rue de la Parcheminerie, originally named rue des Escrivains for the scribes and scriveners who were the heart of the Parisian book trade until parchment makers replaced them in the late Middle Ages. On July 1, 1989, the Abbey Bookshop brought the book trade back to this historic street.
The building Spence serendipitously discovered for his shop is the eighteenth-century Hotel Dubuisson, one of the most handsome in the Latin Quarter. The historic “hôtel” is protected as a monument for its picturesque façade, sculptural decoration, and carved doors.
THE RED WHEELBARROW BOOKSTORE
two doors up from 9 rue de Medicis
11 Rue de Médicis No. 9
75006 Paris, France
Tél : +33 1 43 54 30 54
From their website:
The Red Wheelbarrow is an independent literary bookstore on the Left Bank of Paris opposite the Luxembourg garden with an exciting range of classic and contemporary literature, gastronomy, children’s books in French and English, theory, small press, poetry, history, and politics.
SMITH & SON (formerly WHSMITH)
248 rue de Rivoli
75001 Paris, France
Tél : +33 1 53 45 84 40
Established in Paris in 1870 by the Neal brothers, British citizens, as a stationary shop, lending library, and tearoom.
