George Whitman

George Whitman (December 12, 1913 – December 14, 2011) was the proprietor of the Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris, which continues to be a popular tourist attraction. He was a contemporary of such Beat poets as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg.

Whitman was born in East Orange, New Jersey, United States, and while he was still an infant the family moved to Salem, Massachusetts. In 2006 Whitman was awarded the "Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres" medal by the French government for his contribution to the arts over the previous fifty years.

Bookstore

Whitman founded his bookstore in 1951 and named it Le Mistral, then later named it after Sylvia Beach's earlier Paris bookstore "Shakespeare and Company". His shop, located at 37 rue de la Bûcherie in Paris, was opened in August 1951 (two years before a sister bookshop City Lights was opened in San Francisco by Lawrence Ferlinghetti) by George Whitman with an inheritance from his aunt. He called the shop "Le Mistral" after his first French girlfriend. From the very first night he allowed travellers, young writers, poets and artists to lodge in exchange for a hand in cleaning the shop, building shelves and selling books. Sylvia Beach, whose famous shop was on 12, rue de l'Odéon, was still in Paris and came to Le Mistral to see the writers of the new generation, whom Anaïs Nin called Xerox artists, read aloud their new work. Whitman modeled his shop after Sylvia Beach's and, in 1958 while dining with George, she publicly announced that she was handing the name to him for his bookshop. As it was the only free English-language lending library in Paris, the Beats who arrived at the Beat Hotel on rue Git-le-Coeur quickly found their way to the small bookshop and made a place for themselves there. In 1962, Sylvia Beach died, willing to Whitman a good deal of her private books and the rights to the name Shakespeare and Company. In 1964, Le Mistral was renamed Shakespeare and Company.

George Whitman (politician)

George Whitman (born 1823) was a farmer and political figure in Nova Scotia. He represented Annapolis County in the Nova Scotia House of Assembly from 1863 to 1867.

He was born in Rosette (later Round Hill, Nova Scotia), the son of Elnathan Whitman. In 1851, he married Clements Mary Arabella Boice. Whitman was defeated when he ran for reelection in 1867. He was named to the province's Legislative Council in 1881.

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