Day 9 -- Paris Enters the World of Consumerism

Issues for Today:

How did patterns of consumption change in Paris in the second half of the 19th century? How did this effect the lives of ordinary Parisians? How did different groups in the population experience this differently?

Emile Zola, Au Bonheur des Dames (Ladies Paradise)

• The First Encounter with Mass Consumerism
• Buying and Selling Before the Department Store

Michael B. Miller, The Bon Marché: Bourgeois Culture and the Department Store, 1869-1920.

• The Founding of The Bon Marché
• Buying and Selling Before the Department Store

Rosalind Williams, Dream Worlds: Mass Consumption in Late 19th Century France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), pp 279-283.

• The Advent of Mass Consumption
• The Consumer Revolution
• The Changing Nature of Consumption in Paris
• The Experience of Consuming
• Dreams of Wealth

T.J. Clark, The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Age of Manet and His Followers (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), pp. 55-57.

Examples of Advertising

An 1869 Guide to Shopping in Paris

"Romance in Great Shops," New York Times, January 14, 1883 (An article about two new books that appeared about Parisian department stores.)