literary salons.

Dismounting from your carriage, you approach the door of a large house; figures flit through its doors, light streams from its windows, and the noise of laughter and music emanate from its walls. Inside this building lies the promise of an evening of stimulating conversation, delightful refreshments, and consummate artistry. Inside this building lies a literary salon.

The literary salon traces its roots to the more generic salon of the seventeenth century. Beginning with French courtesan Madame Rambouillet’s efforts to establish a more intellectual alternative to court life, the salon had spread from France to England and then across Europe. Each country adapted the salon’s template to its own cultural emphases. In France, the salon’s function was slightly more ornamental and retained the etiquette and manners of high society; in England and America, ornamentalism was eschewed in favor of a more robust intellectualism. Across all societies, however the salon’s primary function—assembling culture’s brightest minds in congenial discourse together—remained unaltered. Due to this emphasis on intellectual, rather than social superiority, these salons became sites of egalitarian upheaval as earnest members of all classes and genders met upon neutral territory and engaged in the equalizing activity of sharing ideas.

Indeed, in regards to its egalitarian emphasis, the literary salon might almost be termed revolutionary. Its bid for this title arises from the fact that in a century in which every institution—except, possibly, the most progressive schools—maintained sharply defined gender roles, the literary salon largely abolished roles. In the space of a literary salon, one was either that salon’s host(ess) or attendee, and women and men held equal footing in both roles, speaking with and acting among one another as equals.

In an era pre-dating instant communication or mass dissemination of ideas through authoritative media outlets, these assemblies provided an unparalleled opportunity to and a central location in which thinkers of all stripes might develop and spread their notions of art, philosophy, politics, and culture. Nor did the contents of these private conversations remain in the province of those individuals; rather attendees went on to write, theorize, and govern out of the ideas discussed and inspiration received during these meetings. In this manner, many a social movement and artistic innovation was based out of the salon scene.

Thus, these informal rendezvous did not simply provide a rejuvenating interlude for their participants; the ideas and connections spawned in these cloistered conclaves rippled out from their participants’ pens, podiums, and presses, thus infiltrating and influencing culture itself. The literary salon quickly transformed from a cultural phenomenon into a cultural institution throughout the eighteenth century and continued to effect its reign through the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.