George Whitman, the longtime owner of Shakespeare & Company in Paris, died yesterday in his apartment above the store. He was 98 and had suffered a stroke two months ago, according to his daughter, Sylvia.
Founded in 1951, Shakespeare & Company has been a legendary bookstore, what in a long tribute, the New York Times called "an offbeat mix of open house and literary commune." Whitman was famous for providing room and board in the store to writers and booklovers, some 40,000 over the years, he estimated. He asked his guests to help out in the store, and was known at times to be erratic and dramatic. Still, he was a patron of writers and readers. He commented: "I wanted a bookstore because the book business is the business of life."
After World War II, Whitman moved to Paris and began selling English-language books at a kiosk, then opened a store called Le Mistral. In 1964, the store took the name Shakespeare & Company, to commemorate the bard's 400th birthday and to honor Sylvia Beach, who owned the famous Shakespeare & Company in the 1920s and '30s.
