A Salon-in-Exile - by Annalisa Nicholson (Hardcover)

About the Book

A Salon-in-Exile explores the translation of the salon from France to England in the late-17th century via the first book-length study of the Mazarin salon, .

Book Synopsis

This open access book re-evaluates the influence of the ancien régimesalons, which were the foremost cultural centres in early modern France.Presided over by women, these salons carved out spaces for poetry recitals, performances, and scientific lectures amid polite conversation, enabling mixed-gender intellectual exchange. But what happened when salon attendees were banished from France and exported the salon to a new national audience? How did visitors of different creeds and nationalities share this space? In other words, what happened when the salon model itself went into exile? In A Salon-in-Exile, Annalisa Nicholson explores the translation of the salon from France to England in the late seventeenth century via the first book-length study of the Mazarin salon. Hosted by Hortense Mancini (Duchess of Mazarin) and Charles de Saint-Évremond, the Mazarin circle quickly became one of the most celebrated salons in Europe and the most vibrant Francophone community in London.

Across the chapters, Nicholson examines the establishment of the Mazarin salon in 1676 and the activities that it offered - from conversation and gambling to performance and literary collaboration. As a space that brought together the capital's community of French and European exiles with Restoration London's elite, the salon fostered engagement with European thought, French literature, and epicurean philosophy. Attending to this oral and written exchange, A Salon-in-Exile provides a new account of co-existence and collaboration in early modern society with analysis of a wide-ranging corpus of letters, memoirs, plays, operas, and essays. By investigating what happens when the model of the salon moved beyond France's borders, Nicholson argues that the salon transformed into a distinctively pan-European space that accommodated its multilingual and multiconfessional membership.

The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by UKRI.

Review Quotes

A strong defence of how transnational perspectives can represent a renewal of literary history, through an excellent exploration of cross-cultural exchange and tolerance in Hortense Mancini's salon-in-exile, elucidating its function as both a site of resistance against absolutist and patriarchal regimes and a form of collective practice.
Carin Franzén, Professor of Comparative literature, Stockholm University, Sweden

This book offers a richly detailed and elegant account of the Mazarin Salon in London in the late seventeenth century. It is a valuable read for historians of Anglo-French cultural exchanges.
Jérôme Brillaud, Senior Lecturer in French Studies, University of Manchester, UK

This captivating and erudite book significantly shifts our understanding of both French salons and London sociability. Lisa Nicholson gives us a vivid portrait of Mancini's seriously playful salon in all its cross-confessional, cross-linguistic range, unforgettable in its account of exiled aristocrats and errant creatures of many kinds.
Katherine Ibbett, Professor of French, University of Oxford, UK

About the Author

Annalisa Nicholson is British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow in French at King's College London, UK. Her research focuses on early modern women and Francophone exile communities. As an accompaniment to this book on Hortense Mancini's salon, she has edited and translated Mancini's letters for Iter Press.