It’s early in the morning and Kelly Bonneville is at home. Her apartment is on the sixth floor of a traditional Haussmannian building in Paris’s 20th arrondissement, near Gambetta and Père Lachaise – the resting place of literary greats from Proust to Balzac to Apollinaire. Bonneville is the founder of Librairie 1909, a bookshop and library dedicated to rare and forgotten publications, based out of Dover Street Market Paris and, as of May last year, its own address at 3 Passage Guilhem, Paris 11. This month welcomes the release of 1909’s first in-house publication, a poetry book by Gabriel Akira Santos, titled If You Hold Your Tongue Long Enough Pearls Will Form Inside Your Mouth.
For Bonneville, every book bought, sold or recommended is done so with a character in mind, often her friends or clients. “Some are characters from books whom I’d like to meet,” she says. A self-proclaimed hoarder in the grip of parallel possibilities and other worlds, Bonneville can’t help but collect written ephemera – postcards, tickets, recipes, letters. Her curiosity and subsequent cultural understanding are perhaps why, since joining DSMP’s space in 2021, she continues to work with the store, as well as with brands including Comme des Garçons, on research, visual projects and events.
Growing up near the Black Forest, birthplace to the dark and fantastic Grimm Brothers’ fairy tales, Bonneville was always drawn to mythology and fiction. Her love of literature endured, and at 18 years old, she moved to Paris for an internship at the now-defunct I Heart Magazine before completing a hypokhâgne in literature and a Master’s in International Public Law. True to the bookish typecast, Bonneville writes too. “It’s a mix of autobiography, fiction, short stories, scripts and film reviews,” she says. “Often about girlhood, women, loneliness, and the power of sisterhood.” Where she used to enjoy imagining what life might have been like in the past, she’s now turned her focus to the quotidian experiences of the modern woman. “Life has changed and I feel it’s really important to write about now, about women my age and experiences, our challenges.”
Here, Kelly Bonneville tells us about founding 1909, her book recommendations and venturing into publishing.
Rose Dodd: What is the 1909 philosophy?
Kelly Bonneville: What I love about a book is how deeply you can enter someone’s imagination, and that’s what I try to recreate here. When I choose a title, I choose it for someone. I usually have a person in mind, even if it’s someone I don’t really know yet, or who may not even exist yet.
RD: What made you want to open the store?
KB: Paris has a long-standing literary reputation worldwide, and there’s a romantic dimension to its old bookshops and neighbourhood life. A bookshop can function as a meeting place, much like a café. From a very young age, I dreamt of running a space where people could gather, linger, discover things, and find new worlds. It remains my favourite part of what I do: watching people meet, connect, and sometimes become friends, whether just for one night or for a lifetime.
I opened my first shop close to Canal Saint-Martin, in September 2019, just before Covid – great timing. [Laughs]. I joined DSMP in 2021. Romain Eugène Campens, who later became a friend, had previously created 3537 in the same building, alongside Adrian Joffe. They were looking to integrate a bookshop into the space, ideally one run by a woman and with a more specialised focus. He reached out to me, and I immediately said yes.
RD: How did you land on a name?
KB: I was reading The Lady in the Shroud by Bram Stoker, curious to explore his other work beyond Dracula. The book was written in 1909. A date can mean everything and nothing, and nine is a number that keeps appearing in my life.
RD: What is your most treasured piece of writing or favourite publication?
KB: Postcards I’ve received, handwritten recipes from my grandmother, the notes my mother or my sisters leave me when I return to where I grew up, a menu from a very kitschy place in London where two of my friends wrote love notes to me during a very drunken night.
My favourite publication changes all the time! Right now, I really love New Papers. It has lots of short fiction and poetry, and it’s incredibly pleasant to read.
“What I love about a book is how deeply you can enter someone’s imagination, and that’s what I try to recreate here” – Kelly Bonneville
RD: Can you recall your earliest memories of reading and writing?
KB: I grew up surrounded by fields in the countryside near the Black Forest and the German border, and there was quite literally nothing to do, aside from reading and wandering outside. Imagination became my closest ally. As soon as I learned how to write, I never stopped. I filled my school notebooks, writing in the margins of every page. I was obsessed with mythology and couldn’t always tell where reality ended and fiction began, which felt deeply confusing at the time. I’ve kept a journal since I was very young, always somewhere between reality and fiction.
RD: What is a book you think everyone should read?
KB: I always Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett for the way its narrator observes the smallest details of daily life, sharpening her attention to everything around her – how she becomes more aware of the world around her through the small details of everyday life.
RD: How do you source the books you sell?
KB: I’m constantly on the hunt. These days it’s often online, because I’m mostly in Paris for work, but the instinct never switches off. Whenever I travel, even on holiday, my first reflex is to seek out second-hand bookshops, flea markets, or any place where visual treasures might be hiding. There’s so much to read, watch, and listen to that sometimes it even gives me vertigo.
RD: Tell me about your first in-house publication, Gabriel Akira Santos’s poetry book, If You Hold Your Tongue Long Enough Pearls Will Form Inside Your Mouth.
KB: I initially reached out to Gabriel Akira Santos about a job opportunity. But when we finally met, we ended up talking about music and books instead, completely forgetting about the position. He shyly shared some of his poetry with me, and in that moment, it all felt obvious. The book already existed in some way, as if I could already see it published and out in the world.
If You Hold Your Tongue Long Enough Pearls Will Form Inside Your Mouth by Gabriel Akira Santos is published by 1909 and is out this spring.
