A Scented Palace: The Secret History of Marie Antoinette's Perfumer [Hardcover]

Elisabeth de Feydeau (Author), Jane Lizop (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 22, 2006

This book offers a new look at the world of Marie Antoinette through the story of her personal and exclusive perfumer, Jean-Louis Fargeon. Jean-Louis served Marie for fourteen years until 1789 when the Revolution swept across France, its wrath aimed at the extravagances of the Royal Court and those who served it. Fargeon, a lifelong supporter of the Republican cause but a purveyor to the court, was in a dangerous position. Yet he remained fiercely loyal to Marie Antoinette, beyond her desperate flight to Varennes, her execution and even through his own imprisonment and trial. A Scented Palace is a wonderful window into the world of France during its most brutal and violent days.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Feydeau, a professor at the Versailles School of Perfumers, draws on the papers of perfumer Jean-Louis Fargeon to reveal the secrets of his luxurious creations for Marie Antoinette. A native of Montpellier, Fargeon moved to Paris, becoming an apprentice to one of the city's most fashionable perfumers. Fargeon won the queen's favor with a gift of exceptional scented kidskin riding gloves and rapidly gained her confidence; he treated her secret pregnancy-related hair loss and became her loyal friend. Tracing Marie Antoinette's extravagant expenditures and far-fetched follies amid increasingly enraged public opinion, Feydeau charts the fall of the house of Versailles, Marie Antoinette's decline during her imprisonment and Fargeon's own fate. While the perfumer declared himself to be a Republican, he was also a wealthy man with royal connections and thus a natural target for the Revolution. While arrested, he managed to escape trial. Feydeau's modest tome is sympathetic to Marie Antoinette; rather than provide much historical context, it spotlights the intimate life of the palace, excelling chiefly in explanations of fascinating 18th-century beauty secrets, from black adhesive taffeta beauty spots to swan's down powder puffs. Botanical appendixes list the ingredients and methods of Fargeon's influential unguents. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

French writer de Feydeau offers a unique take on the closing years of the ancien regime in France--specifically, court life at the Palace of Versailles as presided over by Queen Marie Antoinette--in composing the life story of Her Majesty's official perfumer. Following an introduction that provides one of the clearest summaries of the French Revolution to be found anywhere, the author proceeds to reconstruct the life of Jean-Louis Fargeon, who hailed from Montpellier, where perfumery was an important profession. His advances from his hometown to his advent into Paris, where his talents were brought to the attention of Madame du Barry, mistress of Louis XV, and then to that of the new queen, Marie Antoinette, is a path the reader follows with absorption, gaining insight into the lives and preoccupations of the elite during the eleventh hour of the old monarchy. Fargeon is an interesting individual in his own right, but doubly so as a paradigm of the precariousness of life for anyone--but especially for former purveyors to the royal court--during the bloody revolution. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 176 pages
• Publisher: I. B. Tauris (June 22, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1845111893
• ISBN-13: 978-1845111892
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #106,470 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #6 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( A ) > Antoinette, Marie

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Scented Palace by DeFeydeau, June 28, 2007

By 

Book Reader "Book Reader" (Georgia United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: A Scented Palace: The Secret History of Marie Antoinette's Perfumer (Hardcover)

This is an excellent book, with amazing research and insights that I have seen nowhere else in books about this period. You get such a feel for what is going on that it is like you are part of the "in-crowd" of the day. You also get a feel of what the people were like at a time when there was no indoor plumbing or sanitation and smells had to be disguised (like the animal parts that were thrown on the lawn from the kitchen). Plus it is easy to read and Ms. De Feydeau doesn't try to analyze anyone like most writers of this period do, she just puts down the where and when and what happened in a pleasant writing style. Nice....

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Heady romance and secret formulae, August 8, 2007

By 

Esmerelda Jones "www.esmereldajones.com" (Western Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Scented Palace: The Secret History of Marie Antoinette's Perfumer (Hardcover)

Intelligent, clear and elegant, A Scented Palace: The Secret History of Marie Antoinette's Perfumer is a gorgeous book awash with floral seduction and midsummer delights. The author, Elisabeth de Feydeau, holds a Phd in the history of perfume and is a professor of the Versailles School of Perfumers. She received the Prix Guerlain for this work.

Adoring fans of Marie Antoinette will sip the sweet intimacy in tidbits such as: "The nobility wore only the most refined perfumes; there were marquises in a cloud of amber, young dandies smelling of cyprus, magistrates wearing enough musk to pass for weasels. Moralists denounced this riot of scents, but those who coveted the perfumes, make-up, unguents and powder scarcely paid them any attention." A glorious read, that page by page, releases every note of perfume.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars interesting perpective of the French Revolution, January 11, 2007

By 

book worm "book worm" (canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Scented Palace: The Secret History of Marie Antoinette's Perfumer (Hardcover)

This book provides a very interesting perspective of the French Revolution from someone close to Marie Antoinette. I truly enjoyed reading it. The only disappointment is that the 'recipes' aren't truly recipes but a description of how some of the essential oils were garnered.