Shakespeare & Co., specializing in British and American literature and founded in 1951 in the St. Germain-des-Prés quarter of Paris, is arguably the city’s most famous English language bookstore. It trades on the reputation of its namesake, founded in 1919 by Sylvia Beach, who published James Joyce’s Ulysses, and was the den mother for Anglophones between the World Wars, attracting expat writers (Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein) and French admirers before closing during the Nazi occupation. After its 1951 resurrection, its Bohemian habitués included Allen Ginsberg, Anaïs Nin, Henry Miller, and James Baldwin.
But across the Seine lies another, far older bookselling establishment—the one I head to when I need a print fix: Librarie Galignani, under the arcades at 223 rue de Rivoli, just across the street from the Tuileries Garden. A sign out front bills it the first English language bookshop on the European continent, though it also sells books in French (and other languages). But its stock aside, what makes it special is its atmosphere, with decades-old mahogany shelves and tables full of books new and old, and rolling ladders on old parquet floors beneath vaulted skylights.
The store, still owned and run by its founding family, was opened in 1801 by Giovanni Antonio Galignani, a member of a Lombard family that had published books since 1520, and operated a press in Venice and a bookstore in Padua. In 1795, Giovanni opened a store in London, and six years later, inspired by Napoleon’s rise to power, he opened a store near the Palais-Royale, just before English visitors flooded Paris following the 1802 Peace of Amiens.
Napoleon’s imposition of a blockade in 1803, and the subsequent arrests of British visitors, were bad for business but Galignani persevered, publishing pirated editions of English books and in 1807, launching the first of a series of literary reviews and periodicals, including Galignani’s Messenger, the first English newspaper published in France. So, when Napoleon fell from power in 1815, Galignani was well-positioned to serve the English who flooded Paris over the next four decades. By 1850, ten percent of the city’s population was British, and they made his bookstore-cum-library’s luxurious, club-like reading rooms and garden a destination and the Messenger, which published both morning and afternoon editions, a vital outlet for political, economic and cultural news. Charles Dickens, William Thackeray and Joris-Karl Huysmans all mentioned Galignani in their writing, cementing its prominence.
In the mid-19th Century, Galignani stopped publishing pirated books and moved to its present location. During World War II, unwilling to stock German books and unable to procure English and American editions, it expanded its offering of books in French, and developed a specialty in Fine Arts titles, which are still prominently featured today along with books on decorative arts, architecture, design and fashion, all of which made it a favorite of the late Karl Lagerfeld, who was a regular despite owning a bookstore of his own. No doubt, Galignani inspired it.