Joan DeJeanReseñas

This is the kind of nonfiction book that is a slow read, but an absolutely fascinating one if you geek out over historical details. This book describes the invention of the toilet, the sofa, the concept of the private bedroom, how France warred against cotton, along with many other intriguing historical minutia. This is a book I'll keep around for reference.

This was an academic book, but it was rather short for an academic book. It had 226 pages of reading and another 50 pages of end notes and bibliography. It covered the development of Paris from the reign of Henri IV to the end of the reign of Louis XIV. I learned a great deal about the history of Paris at this time and also learned many other things about Paris and the development of cities. Paris was the first city to develop a postal system. The first to have public transportation. It was the first city to ask the public to participate in city planning. The book also covered social and cultural developments of the era and laid some convincing groundwork for the idea that the French Revolution of 1789 was really only an extension of the leveling of French society that had occurred during the previous 150 years. There were chapters on the royal building projects of the years 1600 - 1789 and this included the housing developments, the building of what we now call the Ile de la Citie, the creation of public parks, public shopping areas, and the Pont Neuf. There was even a chapter on how all of this building was financed. This chapter was very enlightening, as it turns out that very little of the building was financed with public money. This book explained how the French developed their financial system and how this system contributed to the problems that the French monarchy faced throughout the 18th century. At the same time, the financial system created a very socially mobile society, with commoners able to enter the ranks of the very wealthy and become part of the aristocracy. France during the 17th and 18th century was a very socially mobile place. Much more so than I had thought it was. It was this mobility that, along with the financial system, directly lead to the political problems that manifested itself in 1789. The author takes the position that the Paris of these centuries was a great social and cultural leveler with the free mixing of people of all classes that encouraged democratizing ideas. There are chapters on the development of financiers, the freedom of women to move around and mix in with society, and a great chapter on the development of shopping, in the modern sense of the word, and the infrastructure needed to support shopping, the arcades and covered malls and the rudiments of department stores. Very interesting book. Now I need to go see Paris.

The major takeaway for me from this book is that many of the Parisian features I always attributed to Baron Hausmann in the time of Napoleon III were much-older. Wide, straight boulevards, green public spaces, harmonious exteriors of entire neighborhoods? Those were transformations of the 17th century. The main innovation Hausmann brought to the table when he initiated similar projects is that his methods of achieving them were much more disruptive of what had gone before and dislocated many more inhabitants.
Joan DeJean is in love with Paris and shares that love with us in this book. The subtitle indicates one reason: This is where what we think of as the modern city was invented. A modern city is where large numbers of people from different social and economic strata mingle in public spaces, where goods, services, and ideas circulate with stunning velocity, throwing off creative sparks.
A city is also a place where the poor can experience poverty in a crushing way hardly imaginable in traditional, rural society. While DeJean might concede this, it is not something she focusses on. For that side of the Parisian experience through the ages, Alistair Horne’s Seven Ages of Paris is a counterbalance to this book.
Dispassionately, DeJean traces how the wars of Louis XIV played a role in creating Paris as we know it. By expanding the borders of France and making them defensible, he was able to order the removal of Paris’s medieval walls. This newly-freed area was used to create a ring of boulevards around the city, wide, tree-lined spaces amenable to walking. This development even lies behind the word “boulevard,” taken from an old form of our “bulwark.”
Another way in which war helped make Paris as we know it is that, while war is a terrible machine for wealth-destruction, there is one group for whom it has the opposite effect. They are those who can arrange to provide a sovereign with the means to quickly raise and equip vast armies, at interest, of course. The French even created a new word to denote the few individuals who could do this: “financier.” The proceeds enabled them to rise from often humble origins to gather fortunes that eclipsed those of the traditional aristocracy. The imposing urban palaces they built for themselves, the “hôtels,” set the model for Parisian residential architecture. DeJean accepts all this in a matter-of-fact, even admiring way that seems to ignore the effect that the incessant wars of the Sun King had on the rest of the population of France and its neighbors.
Two of the Parisian features DeJean admires most, however, predate this time and were the initiative of Louis XIV’s grandfather, Henri IV. They are the Pont Neuf and the Place Royale, now known as the Place de Vosges. Both were unprecedented in the western world. The former connected the right and left banks of the Seine, as well as the Île-de-la-Cité (the oldest kernel of Paris) with a stone bridge (the city’s few older bridges were of wood), wide enough to allow new, wider vehicles to cross at the same time in both directions. Even more innovative was the provision of raised sidewalks for pedestrians, interspersed with balconies jutting out over the river that invited passers-by to linger and take in the sights. Paris became a city with contradictory impulses: it was now possible to hurry from place to place (“faire des cours” was a neologism of the time) and yet to slow down and take one’s time, producing that well-known creature of Paris, the “flâneur.”
And where better to linger than in that other innovation, the Place Royale, a large public square surrounded on all four sides by mixed-use buildings (residences above shops) with a royally-decreed uniform facade.
These two innovations, argues DeJean, put Paris on the path to become the kind of city not seen before in Europe. I’m convinced, but I found the term she chose to describe them and other features such as private residences that follow, “monuments,” idiosyncratic. None of these were erected as memorials. They exist not to commemorate the past, but to enrich life in the present.
My other quibble with this book is that the writing is repetitive. DeJean often introduces a fact to illustrate a point; then a few pages later reintroduces the fact. At other times, she writes paragraphs in which the same thought is repeated three times, only varying the formulation. It’s as if she had an English teacher in school who insisted that a paragraph must treat one point but may not consist of only one sentence.
The book contains many images that are in the full sense of the word illustrations, demonstrating features DeJean describes in the text. Strangely, however, they are often introduced with the phrase, “this image... .,” at times denoting an illustration that follows on the next page. I had the sense that I was reading the transcription of a lecture that had been illustrated with slides. The oral nature of a lecture might explain my other quibbles with the prose.
In the end, though, this is a minor complaint and didn’t bother me as much as the author’s seeming indifference to the cost of war (she might feel differently had Hitler had his way and dynamited all the sights of Paris as the Wehrmacht withdrew). Like DeJean, I love Paris, an exciting urban space that rewards repeated visits and exploration. Her book helped me understand why this is so.

An intriguing and insightful account of the famed city of lights and how it came to be. The prose is tightly written and weaves itself in through facts and illustrations. A good effort and a good show.

I recommend it.

A book of how the French invented high fashion, find foods, chic cafe's, style, sophistication and flamour.

So this was the beginning of "keeping up wtih the Joneses?"
it was a bit tedious, but there were interesting parts. I think it would have been more interesting if this were written by someone without a biased opinion of France.

Two patriarchs with a love of money do everything they can to keep their respective off-spring from marrying for love. How did they reach that point?

This book is heavy with detail not only about the Magoulet and Chevrot families but also the stock market crash of the time. It would be difficult to separate one from the other, but it did make for a tedious read at times. The collapse of the currency interested me only as far as the effect it had on the citizens at the time.

Jean II Magoulet held my interest the most. As a child, his father sent him away to keep control of the inheritance. Once he returned, Jean II became ruthless in exacting his revenge and then repeated the example his father had set.

I would have liked to learn more about Louise Magoulet, but I did appreciate the author kept to the facts that have survived the centuries.

For readers who enjoy a real-life Romeo and Juliet tragedy, I would definitely recommend this one.

I received a free copy from NetGalley for reviewing purposes.

A lot more readable than I expected. Yes, some parts are a bit dry, but when you are talking about dates, people, buildings etc, it's impossible to not get a little bit dry sometimes.

Overall very interesting, very well written, and also entertaining.

A lot more readable than I expected. Yes, some parts are a bit dry, but when you are talking about dates, people, buildings etc, it's impossible to not get a little bit dry sometimes.

Overall very interesting, very well written, and also entertaining.

A lot more readable than I expected. Yes, some parts are a bit dry, but when you are talking about dates, people, buildings etc, it's impossible to not get a little bit dry sometimes.

Overall very interesting, very well written, and also entertaining.

As someone said, this book should've been called "The Essence of Style: How Louis XIV Invented High Fashion, Fine Food, ..."

you get the picture. The thing is, I think the book could've been a lot better if it had focused on other people's impact as well. It felt like there was a lot of book padding because she limited herself to things in Louis XIV's reign. Why? There have been plenty of other people throughout time who contributed to France's reputation and creations.

A chapter on umbrellas? Come on!

Please read my blog for a review: http://notmytypee.blogspot.com/2011/10/age-of-comfort.html

I won my copy through First Reads.

I won this book on a Giveaway and was delighted.

This book, about a subject of particular interest to me (history of decoration, lifestyles in the past, fashion of the past, etc.) amply fulfilled my expectations.

It was fascinating to learn the history of the development of bedrooms, flush toilets, and the use of cotton in clothing, to name but a few things.

This book would serve, perhaps, as more of a reference type book than just a read-it-all-at-once book; the style of writing is very understandable and detailed, but not the kind of thing that one would sit down and read straight through without having time to think about the subject. At least for me.

I knew absolutely nothing about the life in France during the time period of this book and so found it quite educational in a general way as well. Particularly interesting to me was the description of how clothing went from being miserably uncomfortable to much more relaxed and tolerable to wear; and how furniture became designed to actually be comfortable instead of merely formal.

All in all, a pleasant read and I recommend the book to anyone interested in the subjects it covers.

This is an engaging and well-researched survey of the development of our modern ideas of comfort. It will be appealing to both the general reader and the historian alike. My only possible concern is that I would have loved to see even more illustrations and photographs. But that is more a reflection of how interesting I found the material than of any lack on the part of the book.

I have to confess, I never in a million years would have associated the court of Louis XV with the invention of the sofa. Extremely well researched, and surprisingly detailed, this book paints a fascinating picture of a piece of furniture many of us would take for granted.

The invention of the superfluous

When Louis XIV's reign began, his nation in no way exercised dominion over the realm of fashion. By its end, his subjects had become accepted all over the Western world as the absolute arbiters in matters of style and taste, and his nation had found an economic mission: it ruled over the sectors of the luxury trade that have dominated that commerce ever since. Louis XIV set new standards for food, fashion, and interior decoration, standards that still prevail today. The extraordinary wave of creativity that swept over France during his patronage unleashed desires that now seem fundamental. In particular he wanted to overshadow the country he contemptuously referred to as "that nation of shopkeepers", the Dutch. He did so particularly with the help of his minister of finance Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the man who wrote the modern book on economic protectionism and trade wars. Colbert worked closely with the country's business elite; he made sure that every aspect of high-end merchandising - from trade regulations to import duties - was tailored to favour his nation's business community.

Renaissance Italy had played a somewhat equivalent role, but had only inspired an elite. France still reigns, because it understands the importance of marketing.

Never underestimate the importance of decor and ambiance.

The Cafe Procope was an example. It created the first coffee house scene in Saint-Germain-des-Pres woth marble, crystal chandeliers, and elegant mirrors instead of beer, inspiring even "elegant women" to frequent them.

Interior decoration shops were the first to employ shop girls, dressed in fashionable clothes, and the first guide books for foreign tourists specialised in shopping.

The first coiffeur invented fashions that changed with the fashion seasons. Hair dressing was promoted by the king's appreciation of his mistress' elaborate fontange hairstyle, that was soon followed by other ladies of the court. It often required wigs, which lead to a new international trade flow.

The 1670's saw the dissemination of fashion trends, as well as an expanded clientele. La mode became a constantly and quickly changing phenomenon with France at the centre. Earlier the quality of garments had been the distinguishing element. High quality garments had been so expensive that styles barely changed. Now the fashion season was invented. The greater variety in garments and colours made ladies visit tailors, instead of the other way around. Ladies fashion was designed by women; men only started to dominate the world of couture in the late nineteenth century. When Chinese fabrics became too popular, Colbert made them illegal, and ordered the industry to "imitate and thereby eliminate".

Local magazines described the seasons' trends and mannequins and gravures were sent to the rich in the countryside and to overseas fashion victims. The fashion plates, showing women much slimmer than on paintings of the time, soon started to show the hand of the artist, just like photography today. They showed ladies of the court, turning them into what we now call celebrities. These plates also sold the image of France as the centre of sophistication and that chic Parisiennes were sexier than women anywhere else.

The publication in 1651 of Francois Pierre la Varenne's Le Cuisinier français laid down the recipes for what is now classical French cuisine. Some 90,000 cookbooks circulated, which indicated they were read outside the circle of professional chefs. The use of spices was reduced for the benefit of new meats (beef), fresh vegetables, and the use of butter. The concept of terroir for cheeses, game, etc. was also born during this era. Traiteurs started to serve meals that cost between 25 and 100 dollars, and were the predecessors of modern day restaurants.

Coffee, at the price of caviar today, was first served in France in the 1640's, and was popularised by the Turkish ambassador. Unlike coffee houses in other countries, French cafes where places where smoking was not allowed, and that looked elegant enough to attract ditto ladies. By 1715, Paris had over 300 such cafes. Champagne also started its march to prominence during this period.

At the start of the reign of Louis XIV, the royal family had a standard collection of gems only. The king showed a special fondness for the sparkly character of diamonds, and his fondness helped diamonds to overtake pearls as the most popular type of gemstone. The king limited his use of pearls to days of mourning. The age not only saw the availability of (Indian) diamonds rise, but also the technology to polish them. Polishing techniques soon moved from giving dept to giving sparkle, leading to the brilliant. The stones were set to jewels by the first joailliers of the city. Catalogues showed jewels in elegant settings, not unlike modern advertisements for watches. At the time of his death Louis had amassed 600 million dollars of crown jewels, used, not in the least, on clothes.

When Louis came to power, all mirrors were still made in Venice. State sponsorship, espionage and Colbert's supervision moved this business to France, despite the fact that the inquisition in Venice was responsible for keeping this profitable technique a secret. Lavish payment kept the master mirror makers in France, despite Venetian terror attacks and attempts to poisoning. The French developed a new technique that allowed a quadrupled size of mirrors of up to nine feet tall, and French mirrors were sold from Warsaw to Siam. The Galerie des Glaces in Versailles was the best marketing one can think of (quite like today the palace gardens were open to paying visitors). With the technology available to make large mirrors, smaller ones became cheaper and spread among the bourgeoisie.

Cities were still dark at night and consequently dangerous. The government first introduced torch bearers that could bring you around town quite like a modern day taxi. In 1667 street lanterns (with huge candles) were introduced for which a special tax was raised. The city could now function without interruption after sundown. Soon other important European cities followed the newly minted Ville Lumiere's example. Street lights were followed by many renovation and beautification projects that put François Mitterrand's to shame.

The invention of the umbrella did something equivalent to streetlights: it increased the possibility to spend time and money outdoors. Just like with torch bearers, the first umbrellas were offered in fixed location by people that would bring you to your destination.

The specific workshops of the age and the modern ways to display merchandise created the brand and antiques. The fair of Saint Germain had reduced circus-style entertainment at the benefit of high end shopping for many items, all under one roof. For sale were silverware, jewellery, linens, porcelain, mirrors, paintings, etc. Even the king visited the fair. Later antiques and Oriental objects became fashionable.

The haute volée needed at least 3 hours for la toilette, an often communal and theatrical experience that including pomades and perfume, another art taken over from the Italians. Grasse and colonies like Mauritius were used by Colbert to develop the scent business, that must have been helped by the unpopularity of bathing as well. In the mid 16th century perfume referred to fumes, but the French turned them into sweet-smelling goods from soap to powder.

Court parties were used to broadcast French style through newspaper articles around Europe.

The Essence of Style is a high-octane history book that is clearly a product of America's gilded age of mortgage debt/credit card debt/car debt and whatever debt before the financial crisis of 2008. The book contains a lot more "glamorous" (modern) designer name dropping than is necessary to make its case. The book contains no assessment of the economic effect of this concentration on the production of luxury products. It can be very lucrative to reign in a market niche, but if that is caused by import restrictions or government hand-outs the overall economic effect can be a lot less positive. At the end of the reign of Louis XIV the state coffers were empty. How much of this can be attributed to Louis bellicose adventures and how much to his mercantile economic strategies is a question that I would have liked to see covered.

What also disturbed me was that Ms. Dejean organised her facts in such a way that there is maximal "revolutionary effect". As an example, Susan Pinkard's A Revolution in Taste describes the development of gastronomy in a broader and longer term perspective. This brings the evolution in the revolution to the surface, and is ultimately more rewarding for the reader.

Sometime in the late sixteenth century, architects and designers in Paris became increasingly interested in comfort and style. Out of this movement, came almost all of the modern versions of today's furniture--the armchair, the couch/sofa, the private bedroom, the bathroom, and even cotton clothing. Joan DeJean does an excellent job of tracking the progress of these new innovators, even including the public and social backlash each new design created. Her book is meticulously researched, but does rely heavily on the few contemporary sources that existed on the subject. It does get a bit tedious to read about sofa design for twenty or so pages, but the end result is an intriguing look at how the design of the modern home came about. A good read.

As with her previous book, DeJean's The Age of Comfort brings together a strong scholarly background and a talent for translating the academic into the popular. It's great to see a popular book that takes 18th-century France seriously.

DeJean provides a fascinating tour of French architecture, interior design, furniture design, and textiles in what she calls the "age of comfort" and charts the transition to the age of comfort from the "age of magnificence." The story she tells is both fascinating -- especially for someone who has little exposure to 18th century French fashion and design other than what he's seen in a museum -- and written in a lively, fast-paced style that makes what is for me a somewhat foreign subject interesting and engaging (at least for the space of the book itself). However, because she first gives what she calls a brief history of comfort and then approaches it from several different angles (the bathroom, the bedroom, furniture, clothing, etc.), it does begin to be repetitive. My suggestion: read the brief history, then space out the reading of the rest of the book over several weeks (instead of two days) so that it doesn't feel like you're being told the same thing, over and over again, from different angles.

A well-written, entertaining and educative read that would appeal to anyone with an interest in history, architecture, antique furniture, interior design and fashion. The breadth of research is impressive, but the book is written in a lively, conversational style that will appeal to general readers.

I had some idea about the role played by French architects and designers in creating modern style, but the wealth of detail provided by this book was fascinating, and new to me. I was amazed by the relatively short span of time (a century) in which the French created so much of what we now take for granted in our lives - comfortable furniture to lounge upon, private bedrooms, bathtubs and flush toilets, cotton clothing. Sadly, by the end of the book, the author reveals how most of these innovations were swept away in the Terror that followed the French Revolution, and it was left to others (mainly the English) to redesign and reinvent these things throughout the nineteenth century.

My favourite item described in the book is the miraculous "table volante" (flying table) designed in the 1750s for Louis XV's private dining room at Versailles, which allowed him and his guests to dine in privacy, without servants. As they finished each course of their meal, the dining room floor would open, the table "flew" down to a space below, and the floor closed up again. Moments later, the floor reopened and the table flew up, relaid with fresh china and the next course. If there is a working prototype of such a thing still in existence somewhere, I must see it before I die!

Behold the humble sofa - who knew that the creation of this ubiquitous piece of furniture would spark a design revolution throughout France and the rest of Europe? What began as a simple wooden chair evolved into much more than a place to sit. In the late 17th century, a home was nothing more than a place to sleep, eat, and not much else. All it took was a little padding for the seat and the age of comfort was off and running.

According to "The Age of Comfort" by Joan De Jean, a house was a practical and utilitarian space. The family spent most of their time in the warmest room in the house - the kitchen. They would bathe, eat, and sleep there because there were no other rooms with specific uses. When there were visitors, they would have to sit on whatever was available and eat wherever they happened to be sitting. Rich or poor, no one came over for a rollicking good time. In just a few months, or so it seems, the home changed its format from functional to comfortable. Soon Paris was the talk of Europe and many interior design mavens and concepts were in the vogue. Everyone who was anyone just had to have a sofa, imported Indian cloth on the walls, indoor plumbing, a bedroom that wasn't also a place for visitors to sit, fireplaces that didn't smoke you out of the room and actually kept the room warm, a bathroom with a door, and, of course, a boudoir for the lady of the house. Suddenly there were livable and inviting spaces which in turn encouraged more people to open their homes to friends and family (and in some cases, interior design tourists). Prior to this domestic upheaval only museums, theaters, and churches were designed to be beautiful. Now your home had to have the latest elegant innovations and, oddly enough, white ceilings.

While this subject may seem intimidatingly esoteric, it's actually quite interesting. The author has provided loads of information, not only about designing a comfortable home, but about the people who made it happen. As a matter of fact, if it wasn't for a mistress or two of Louis' XIV and XV, this whole process may have never happened. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the history of interior design, France in the late 17th century, the art of seduction as influenced by a proper place to sit, and the effect of comfortable seats on those uncomfortable dresses. It includes the interesting fact (I think) that canapés (those fancy party delicacies that sit on a small piece of bread) got their name from the canopy bed - it was "decided that the bread resembled a sofa's cushion". Bet you didn't know that. As noted by other reviewers, the illustrations are disappointing. Not enough color plates and the fuzzy black and white illustrations make it hard to discern what the author is trying to point out.

Sadly (for lack of a better word), the whole concept of comfort as the Parisians knew it ended by the 1830's (surprisingly, at that point indoor plumbing would disappear) and homes would become, once again, simply a place to sleep, eat, and not much else.

Perhaps the whole era of the comfortable home in Paris was expressed best by the Marquis de Caraccioli when he said that "All the nations of the world were now much more civilized" and, by following the lead of the Paris designers, "Europe had become French".½

The Age of Comfort : When Paris Discovered Casual – and the Modern Home Began by Joan DeJean.

Who knew that the French invented sofas, comfy chairs, flush toilets, indoor plumbing, living rooms, informal clothing, private bedrooms and bathrooms and completely changed the way that people related to one another, way back in the 17t h and 18th Centuries, before the Revolution? I sure didn't, until I read this readable and fascinating book. DeJean introduces the reader to the flamboyant personalities who reshaped their own world and created many of the things we take for granted now. The Marquise de Pompadour and other royal mistresses, the architect Blondel, assorted kings named Louis and their wives and children, and more all shaped a society that we recognize today, although in the aftermath of the French Revolution much was lost and had to be re-invented by the English later.

There is an extensive bibliography and index.

If this book has any flaw it is the illustrations. The colour plates are great but too few, and the black and white pictures interspersed through the text are not always clearly reproduced and much too few.

Reviewed from LibraryThing Early Reviewer copy.

This is a very interesting book about the rise of the idea of living comfortably that occurred in France in the early 1700s. DeJean breaks the book into chapters about different inventions and developments that all aided this age of comfort and the transition away from the formality of the age of magnificence. Some of the most interesting chapters dealt with the architecture of homes and a move away from public spaces in the home towards private spaces, i.e. the bedroom and boudoir. Also the development of the bathroom complete with flush toilet, the use of cotton as a comfortable fabric, and the design of women's clothes in a more comfortable manner, and the development of furniture such as the sofa and easy chair.

To me, the most incredible thing about this book was that so many of these things were in use in the early 1700s and were destroyed and fell out of use after the French Revolution. Can you imagine having private bathrooms with flush toilets and bathtubs and then giving that up for almost a hundred years! Crazy.

The topic of this book may seem uninteresting at first glance, but I think it would appeal to many people and would definitely recommend giving it a try. DeJean is an entertaining and informative writer.

This is one of those books that I picked up because the topic seemed interesting. Did it find it to be so? Yes! But as I read it, I realized that there is no one in my life who would want to read this book and discuss the evolution of furniture with me. It’s really hard to say who the intended audience for this book is. It’s a little casual for serious historians, almost gossipy when DeJean confides that the granddaughter of King Louis XIV “got away with murder”. But I can’t say that the Average Joe is really all that interested in the many variations of ‘sofa’ created by the French in the 17th and 18th century.

The overarching theme of the book is that as the idea of a ‘private’ life became a greater part of daily living amongst the wealthy French, specialized rooms and furniture developed to help sustain it. Each chapter focuses on a different furniture item or room. There’s a chapter, complete with multiple diagrams, about the flush toilet. Another talks about the boudoir, which was originally intended as a counterpart to a man’s study – a place for a woman to relax and work on improving her mind – but quickly developed a reputation for other activities. Mini-biographies of some of the great innovators of the era – both the artists who designed the furniture and the patrons who paid for it – help provide greater context. There’s a fair amount of repetition from one chapter to the next, making me wonder if this book was pulled together from lecture notes or a series of presentations.

This so-called ‘Age of Comfort’ eventually spread throughout Europe, but DeJean concentrates almost exclusively on the contributions of the French. Granted, she’s an author who specializes in French culture, but it would have been nice to hear a little more about what was happening in other countries. She mentions England a few times, but only to point out that they haven’t gotten France’s revolutionary ideas about comfort yet.

If you’re interested in the beginnings of the art of interior design, this would be a good book for you to read. I liked it, and thought the book was pretty neat. It’s a different way to look at the Rococo period of French art, architecture, and furniture design.

LibraryThing Early Reviewers

I was not sure at first if this book would hold my interest. It did! I was impressed with this book on several levels. Like everyone else I go through life in the modern age taking the idea of 'comfort' for granted. A soft bed, a flush toilet, a comfy armchair, a built in closet, private interior space, and of course most importantly (well to me) the inclusion of built in furnishings such as bookcases and shelves. Where did our concern for 'comfort' begin, and how did it evolve at such as pace that we now take it for granted. Ms. DeJean attempts to answer these questions.

The book itself was an homage to France.....Francophiles everywhere rejoice. Ms. DeJean leads us down the path to the emergence of modern comfort in easy fashion. France was the epicenter of the comfort zone, and characters straight out of Versailles. The book was easy to read and to understand. The only issues I had were at times ideas were not completely developed, and some people were introduced over and over again. To the point that the former actress was mentioned as such so many times that I have forgotten her name, but not the details of her crimson bedcoverings. The repetition of her name did nothing to make me remember it and ought to have been edited out on several occasions.

I have been thinking about the aristocratic women of Louis XIV's court rushing to the Hall of Mirrors to urinate as there were no 'public' toilet facilities available to them. Such behavior in such a splendid locale! This was the epitome of the little facts spread through the book which made it an entertaining read.½

This book poses an interesting chicken/egg question: Did an increased desire for privacy and comfort (function) lead to the development of comfy furniture and design (form) or did more comfortable furniture and design encourage people in their desire for a private and less restrained life in which to enjoy them? DeJean never satisfactorily answers this question. She does provide ample detail as to the development and rising popularity of cushioned furniture, indoor plumbing, architecture of private spaces and informal dress.
French furniture of the 1600's and 1700's have a timeless quality -- largely because form and function follow one another so closely. One wonders if modern furniture, with form disconnected from function, will fare so well.

Ms. DeJean is quite convinced of French supremacy in these areas of endeavor. Her central hypothesis is that the French (particularly Royalty) created a dichotomy between the highly formalized court life and more comfortable private rooms where they enjoyed close friends and family. Specialized rooms and furniture soon followed into the private sphere. I am less convinced as to French supremacy. Samuel Pepys wrote contemporaneously of specialized private rooms in his famous diary. Dejean takes no note and writes denigratingly of culture in other parts of Europe. In this regard, I heartily recommend "A History of Private Life", Philippe Aries and Georges Duby, general editors, especially volume three "Passions of the Renaisssance." Their focus is more global and nuanced in scope.

I do have some quibbles: Fond of the ellipse and internal asides, Ms. DeJean crafts overly long sentences which are agony to parse. These bog down the reader and makes one wish for a disciplined editor. The text is without footnotes and I found the endnotes to be cumbersome. These are minor points for a generally well written book.

Overall, as a reader with an interest in history, I found this book to be rather heavy going. As reader with an interest in domestic life and interior design, the book was far more enjoyable.½