Sylvia Whitman

Shakespeare and Company, the legendary English-language bookshop on Paris’s Left Bank, has been a beacon for artists, writers, bohemians, and all sorts of other dreamers and freaks since George Whitman first opened its doors in 1951. Sylvia, his only child, joined George at the bookshop in 2002 after graduating from university in London. In 2006 George officially handed over the reins to her, just a few years before he passed away in his bedroom above the shop, two days after his 98th birthday.