Zoom in: Paris

On a regional scale, 16 addresses are situated around the greater Paris region yet outside of Paris proper, forming a roughly concentric circle around the city. The one furthest from the center is near today’s Orly Airport, and the rest are scattered in other suburbs such as Saint-Denis, Viroflay (near Versailles), Meudon, and Nanterre. Most of the addresses in the suburbs are coded with darker colors, while the city contains a relatively even mix of light and dark colors. This suggests that most of the early émigrés (from late 1910s to early 1920s) settled within the city; later newcomers, especially those active in around 1930, broadened their lodging option to include the surrounding suburbs, perhaps for financial concerns. Note that “suburbs” (banlieues) have different connotations in the modern American context versus the French context. The French banlieues, unlike the Anglo-Saxon suburbs which house the white middle class, were created at the end of the 19th century to house the popular class. Housing needs explain the strata of urban landscapes: small Belle Époque apartment buildings, pavilions of defective housing estates from the interwar period, bars and towers of social housing from the Trente Glorieuses (1945-1975).

In comparison, Shakespeare & Co. had a number of members residing within the Greater Paris Region but outside of the city – but to a much smaller proportion (about 50 out of 2,000 addresses, compared to 16 out of 100). Either not many American/English-speaking expatriates lived in the various suburbs on the outer peripheries of Paris, or those living there tended not to be included within this library community. This lack of inclusion might result from the fact that Sylvia Beach charged 10% extra for subscribers who lived outside of the city: expatriates who lived in the suburbs might have not been able to consistently afford an elevated expense and thus resorted to smaller, cheaper libraries in Paris or locally instead. Living in a non-urban, less diverse environment also implies a greater level of familiarity with the local language and culture, and perhaps consequently, less dependence on (as well as access to) English-language books and communities. On the other hand, members from other provinces in France likely also had subscription to their local libraries, but they would be more willing to pay the 10% extra to Sylvia Beach – for a one-time or short-term subscription during a trip to Paris. As tourists, they must have wanted to experience the eye-opening cultural life of the capital, and to read the newest titles published and/or acquired by the library such as Joyce’s Ulysses, which might have become well-known in their local communities but yet inaccessible.

Within the city of Paris, one sees addresses fairly evenly distributed on the Left and Right Banks (37 and 38 members respectively). The figures below present statistics of the distribution of our sample’s member addresses across different arrondissements. As an umbrella term, the Left Bank refers to the southern bank of the river Seine in Paris, comprising of neighborhoods traditionally considered more cultural: the 5^th arrondissement, where the largest number of Turgenev members lived and where Turgenev Library itself is located, is known forQuartier latin (the Latin Quarter), named for its many universities, especially the oldest and most elite ones. The 7^th arrondissement is represented by the Faubourg Saint-Germain district, which has long been known as the home of the French high nobility. The Montparnasse district, located in the 14^th arrondissement, was home to the avant-garde in the 1920s and 30s, where Beckett, Joyce, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Picasso, Dali, Chagall and many other artists and intellectuals lived, worked, and socialized.

Given this geographical background, one might expect more readers to live in areas with a stronger artistic or literary atmosphere, but such was not the case according to our data. How about for Shakespeare & Co.? SCP’s preliminary analysis of a sample of addresses suggested that “unsurprisingly,” the majority of the members lived on the Left Bank – similar to the Turgenev Library (in fact, the two were half an hour’s walk away), Shakespeare & Co. was located in a central location on the Left Bank: near the Luxemburg Gardens in the 6th arrondissement, an area traditionally associated with the publishing industry and the book trade. The analysis pointed out that surprisingly, there was a significant number of members living on the Right Bank, especially in the 16^th arrondissement, a residential neighborhood popular among the old money and the nouveau riche alike since its expansion and Haussmannization under the Second Empire.

Looking at the map with Shakespeare & Co.’s full data, this conclusion still holds true: 72% (398 out of 1409) of the members lived on the Left Bank, and among those who lived on the Right Bank, a third lived in the 16^tharrondissement. A breakdown of the number of members per arrondissement as well as their respective percentages within the entire member population is presented in figures below. SCP’s sample size is 20 times that of Turgenev’s (at this stage), so the number of addresses on the Right Bank is indeed significant enough to warrant the name of the earlier analysis – “the literary right bank” – but proportionally it pales in comparison to Turgenev members’ address distribution: 49% on the Right Bank. The contrast of evenness versus the lack thereof is evident is when one displays both layers of coordinates in juxtaposition on the map.

Besides the Left versus Right Bank dichotomy, another point of observation is clustering. Even in the regional view above, one notes that Shakespeare & Co. member addresses in the suburbs are often found in relatively close proximity, concentrated in the west and south areas of the region, with very few in the north and east. In contrast, the Turgenev addresses in the region are usually found in relative isolation, quite evenly spread out in all directions, circling the city in the center. Within the city, Shakespeare & Co.’s member addresses also clustered to a much greater degree than the Turgenev’s. The figures below show both maps individually as well as in juxtaposition. While not much is visible in the city center due to the drastic difference in sample size, we may pay attention to the distributions in the peripheries.

For both cases, the highest density of member population occurs in the arrondissement where the library itself is situated: the 6^th and the 5^th respectively. However, in the case of Shakespeare & Co., a dense crowd of address markers surround the library from all directions, spreading into neighboring arrondissements, then across the river with a north-west orientation, seizing some grounds on the Right Bank. Its density generally decreased the further away from the library. Moreover, there seemed to be not only a north-south unevenness in distribution (i.e. Left vs. Right Bank), but also an east-west one: if the library resembled a light source that emanated readers, there seemed to be a wall after the slight turn of the Seine at Pont de Sully; there are strikingly few addresses in the 19^th, 20^th, 11^th and 13^th arrondissements compared to those in the neighboring districts, forming a crescent-shaped area of emptiness adjacent to an inner circle of great population density.

In contrast, for the Turgenev Library, while a cluster of addresses surround the library, it does not extend into nearby areas. Smaller clusters form here and there, such as on both Banks near Tour Eiffel, but in relative isolation rather than as a continuous, expanding mass. And while the small sample size might to an extent affect our observation, this lack of clustering results from a particular pattern of distribution rather than a lack of points. On the Right Bank, in contrast to how the address points for Shakespeare & Co. seem to gravitate towards the river/the library, the member addresses for Turgenev Library are relatively spread out on a north-south axis; while there is still an imbalance on the east-west axis, it exists to a lesser extent in the Turgenev’s case – several isolated points fill out the space of the northeastern periphery of the city, instead of leaving it almost completely blank.

In the conceptualization of the address points for Shakespeare & Co. as spreading out from a center (i.e. the library), one must note that this “spread” is purely metaphorical: while there are membership dates on the SCP website’s searchable “Members” section, they are absent from the exportable .csv dataset, on which the only chronological data are the members’ birth and death dates. Therefore, before the membership dates become accessible in alignment with the coordinates data, we could not date these 2,000 coordinate points to trace the movements of the member population. We do not know whether the library first attracted those who lived the closest, and then expanded its sphere of influence metaphorically and geographically. We also do not know whether members who lived in proximity joined the library during the same period of time or consecutively – in other words, whether one member in a community would have inspired and encouraged others to join the library as well.

For the Turgenev Library, with chronology data we are able to conclude that a “spread” did take place: surprisingly, the early addresses (pre-1924, i.e. before the publication of the first belletristic catalogue) are located more often on the Right Bank than on the Left. Only after 1928 did the Left Bank gain many of its membership population, including near the library itself, suggesting that the library’s development of its followings did not originate geographically from the location of the source. It was also in these later years (in the scope of our data) that the addresses moved outwards towards the peripheries and the exterior of the city: the majority of points on the southern and northeastern edges of Paris dated from 1929 to 1934, as well as most points in the suburbs of the greater Paris Region. Further research would compare this chronology with larger-scale settlement data for Russian émigrés in Paris, to see whether the “spread” we observed results from the incoming émigrés’ expansion of living territories, or from the library’s expansion of its influence.

What might have resulted in these different patterns of geographical distribution for the two libraries? To begin with, while many of the Turgenev readers are unidentified, many of the identified ones were public figures, previously involved in politics or military, and overall borrowed more canonical works than avant-garde literature. These readers might have been less interested in living in trendy districts like Montparnasse, but prefer somewhere more quiet and comfortable. For the unidentified émigrés, given the state of affairs in Russia at the time, the choice of emigration was often to avoid persecution, and/or to maintain certain status and freedom. They were from diverse professions, concerned with literary consumption, but perhaps less frequently with production. Many were not in a position to be picky about where exactly to settle down. This might explain the relatively even distribution of their addresses on both Banks and across various arrondissements in the city.

In contrast, the unidentified members of Shakespeare & Co. include many who were studying or working in Paris (the library had student discounts), compared to the Russian émigrés who were mostly in escape or exile. In seeking intellectual fulfillment and cultural experience, they would likely favor the more fashionable Left Bank and have the means to afford such. The identified members are mostly literary figures: besides the likes of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Joyce, even the lesser-known ones (from the Shakespeare & Co. Project’s preliminary sample) include a magazine editor, an academic, a founder of a literary review, a children’s book writer, a translator, etc. These individuals often helped each other in art and in life – for example, member Ludmila Savitzky translated fellow member James Joyce’s A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man into French in 1924, and provided lodging for him (she was an Russian émigré, though no evidence has suggested any involvement with the Turgenev Library so far). Such collaborations and interactions would have required and resulted in living close to one another, producing a positive feedback loop where many expatriates might end up moving to the same district. Artists also tend to be more comfortable with an itinerant lifestyle: one of Shakespeare & Co.’s members, American poet Archibald MacLeish, for example, record five different addresses in Paris, as well as forwarding addresses in Cap d’Antibes, Normandy, the Berkshires, and New York City. In contrast, none of the Turgenev members within the sample had more than two addresses listed, though most of the cards in the sample only record one year’s activity, which might not comprehensively reflect one’s change of addresses, if any.

Works Cited:

Annie Fourcaut, “Les banlieues populaires ont aussi une histoire,” Revue Projet, 2007.

Arlen Hansen, Expatriate Paris: A Cultural and Literary Guide to Paris of the 1920s (New York: Arcade, 1990).

Joshua Kotin, “Becoming a Member of the Shakespeare and Company Lending Library,” Shakespeare and Company Project, version 0.29.0, Center for Digital Humanities, Princeton University, January 30, 2020.

Jesse McCarthy, “The Literary Right Bank,” Mapping Expatriate Paris.

Joshua Kotin et al, Shakespeare and Company Project: Lending Library Members Dataset.

Tatiana Ossorguine, « La bibliothèque Tourguenev », Bulletin d'information de l'ABF, n^o 41,‎ 1963.