Shakespeare and Company was only part bookshop; it was also part library, part youth hostel and part cultural shrine. As Anaïs Nin recorded in her Paris diaries of the 1950s: “And there by the Seine was the bookshop... an Utrillo house, not too steady on its foundations, small windows, wrinkled shutters. And there was George Whitman, undernourished, bearded, a saint among his books, lending them, housing penniless friends upstairs, not eager to sell, in the back of the store, in a small overcrowded room, with a desk, a small stove. All those who come for books remain to talk, while George tries to write letters, to open his mail, order books. A tiny, unbelievable staircase, circular, leads to his bedroom, or the communal bedroom, where he expected Henry Miller and other visitors to stay.”