From Parlour To Living Room
In the 19th century, the front parlour was the room in the house used for formal social events, including where the recently deceased were laid out before their funeral. The term living room is found initially in the decorating literature of the 1890s, where a living room is understood to be a reflection of the personalty of the designer, rather than the Victorian conventions of the day. The rise of the living room meant the end of the dedicated room for receiving guests that had been common in the Victorian period.
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Famous quotes containing the words parlour, living and/or room:
“Examples are cited by soldiers, of men who have seen the cannon pointed, and the fire given to it, and who have stepped aside from he path of the ball. The terrors of the storm are chiefly confined to the parlour and the cabin.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Conventionalities are at length as bad as impurities. Even the facts of science may dust the mind by their dryness, unless they are in a sense effaced each morning, or rather rendered fertile by the dews of fresh and living truth.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In some of those dense fir and spruce woods there is hardly room for the smoke to go up. The trees are a standing night, and every fir and spruce which you fell is a plume plucked from night’s raven wing.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)