Travel Muse Magazine

Heading to Paris and just need to get your book fix? No problem. Here are two English book stores you need to visit… along with a few more bookish places to see while you’re enjoying this jewel of a city too.

Shakespeare and Company

If you love books, reading and or writing… or watched or read anything set in Paris, you’ve probably heard of Shakespeare and Company, even if you don’t know that you know. It’s the place that Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, and other greats all hung out at when they moved to Paris to write. (That, however was in the original location.) In fact, Joyce’s Ulysses was originally published BY the bookstore at the bookstore! The “newer” version began in the 1950s and had its own group of famous writers who “grew up” there, like Allen Ginsberg, James Baldwin, and Anaïs Nin. In fact, there’s even a book about the bookstore’s famous history: Shakespeare and Company, Paris: A History of the Rag & Bone Shop of the Heart.

The vibe here is “literary nerds welcome.” I LOVE it! Yes, there’s often a line to go in (gotta love it- a line to go into a bookshop!), but it moves fast and the people that work there are very nice and helpful. I was hoping they had more used books than they had and they were out of the book I was looking for when I went, but I found another. And it was by an author I love and somehow had never heard of the book before as it is popular in Europe but not in America! My daughter found a few books too. Plus I had to get their cute book tote. Prices were reasonable and I love that they stamp the books as bought there!

Librairie Galignani

Another must-see Paris bookshop for readers of books in English is Librairie Galignani, as it is the oldest English-language bookstore in mainland Europe, opening way back in 1801. It’s owned by descendants of the original owner, who traces their book publishing ancestry all the way back to 1501. On a related note: The oldest continuously running bookshop in the world (in any language) can be found in Lisbon. (Portugal is a good stop for my fellow bookish travelers! )

Back to Paris’s Galignani, they did have that book I was looking for that was out at Shakespeare and Co. and the salesperson found it in about one minute for me. And they, too, will stamp your purchase to mark that you bought it there. Unlike its famous counterpart, I hadn’t heard of this one until wandering by it on my way to the Louvre from the Musée d’Orangerie via the Tuileries. But I 100% recommend it.

More Literary Paris

A few other bookish stops you’ll also want to visit:

• The bouquinistes (the green box-shaped kiosk-stalls) along the river Seine have been selling used and antique books for more than a century. These cool little shops are actually a Paris UNESCO World Heritage site.
• Mazarin Gallery at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France Richelieu – the National Library of France has a beautiful and history section dedicated to treasures like Casanova’s original handwritten pages and Proust’s hand-written edits. Read this great article by my favorite France-based writer about the library when it reopened in 2022.
• Notre-Dame Cathedral – You were probably heading there anyway, but this is your reminder that it has literary connections in The Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo, a French legend who also wrote Les Misérables, which was a book long before it was a musical and film, if you weren’t aware somehow.
• Maison de Victor Hugo is a museum in the 4th arrondissement dedicated to Hugo that you’ll want to visit if you’re a literary lover or just a Hugo fan.
• Place du Général Catroux aka “Place des Trois Dumas” is a statue and square in the 17th arrondissement dedicated to Alexandre Dumas of The Three Musketeers fame. The backdrop for the book itself is in the wonderful area of Saint Germain des Prés. Here’s there’s also a plaque commemorating Dumas writing the book.
• Rue d’Artagnan in the 12th arrondissement is also for fans of The Three Musketeers, as it was named for the real man depicted by Dumas in the novel.
• Café de Flore & Les Deux Magots are both hotspots of writerly hangs dating way back and are virtually next door in Saint Germain des Prés. Flore is a lovely spot, perfect to sit and watch the world go by, coffee in one hand, pen in the other.

Get ready to travel to France by reading these great books set there!.

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