World of the Salons - Lilti, Antoine (Director of Studies, Director of Studies, L'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris)

The World of the Salons is a revisionist study of the French salon of the eighteenth century, arguing that it was a place governed by social hierarchy, not equality, connected to the world of the Court, and not the fount of the Enlightenment as has traditionally been believed.