Shakespeare and Company is an independent bookstore located in the 5th arrondissement, in Paris's Left Bank. Originally established in 1919 by Sylvia Beach, in the 1920s the store was a gathering place for writers such as Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway, William S. Burroughs, James Joyce and Ford Madox Ford. Shakespeare and Company serves as both a bookstore and a reading library, specializing in English-language literature. The current store is named after and in honor of the earlier store which closed during World War II.