George Whitman

George Whitman
George Whitman photographed above his bookshop in 2008 by Olivier Meyer
Born	(1913-12-12)December 12, 1913 East Orange, New Jersey, United States
Died	December 14, 2011(2011-12-14) (aged 98) Paris, France
Occupation	Proprietor
Children	Sylvia Beach Whitman

George Whitman (December 12, 1913 – December 14, 2011) was the proprietor of the Shakespeare and Company, the celebrated English-language bookstore on Paris’s Left Bank. He was a contemporary of writers such as Allen Ginsberg, Anaïs Nin, and Lawrence Durrell, as well as a lifelong friend of the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

Whitman was born in East Orange, New Jersey, United States, and grew up in 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.

Whitman was raised in Salem, Massachusetts. When he was a boy, his family spent two years living in Nanjing, China, where Whitman’s father, Walter, had a guest professorship. This early adventured abroad established Whitman’s lifelong passion for travel and far-flung places.

After graduating with a degree in journalism from Boston University in 1935, Whitman struck out on what he called his “hobo adventures,” train-hopping, hitchhiking, and walking on foot through the U.S., Mexico, and Central America. It was the middle of the Great Depression, but wherever he went, Whitman said he was met with kindness and generosity. This experience would form the founding ethos of his bookstore: “Give what you can; take what you need.”

From 1940 to 1944, Whitman served in the U.S. Army. For the first two years, he was stationed at a remote weather post in Greenland, where he was a medical warrant officer. From 1943 to 1944, Whitman served in a hospital in Taunton, Massachusetts. There he also managed to open his first bookstore, the Taunton Book Lounge, “modeled on the great Paris salons,” as he wrote to a friend.