Shakespeare and Company is the name of two independent bookstores on Paris's Left Bank. The first was opened on November 1919. During the 1920s, it was a gathering place for writers such as Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce and Ford Madox Ford. The second was opened in 1951 by George Whitman. Today, it serves both as a regular bookstore and as a reading library, specializing in English-language literature. The shop was featured in the Richard Linklater film Before Sunset and in the Woody Allen film Midnight in Paris.