The original Shakespeare & Co. was established by Sylvia Beach, an American expatriate, on 19 November 1919, at 8 rue Dupuytren, before moving to larger premises at 12 rue de l'Odéon in the 6th arrondissement in 1922. During the 1920s, Beach's shop and lending library was a gathering place for many then-aspiring and renowned writers and poets such as Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway, Djuna Barnes, James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and Ford Madox Ford. The original Shakespeare & Co. was forced to close in 1941 during the German occupation of Paris. Beach was arrested and imprisoned for six months by Nazi authorities. Upon her release toward the end of the war, Beach was in ill health, and was never able to reopen Shakespeare & Co.