The Bon Marché: Bourgeois Culture and the Department Store, 1869-1920

by Michael B. Miller

Overview

In this comprehensive social history of the Bon Marché, the Parisian department store that was the largest in the world before 1914, Michael Miller explores the bourgeois identities, ambitions, and anxieties that the new emporia so vividly dramatized. Through an original interpretation of paternalism, public images, and family-firm relationships, he shows how this new business enterprise succeeded in reconciling traditional values with the coming of an age of mass consumption and bureaucracy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781400844043
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	10/06/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	32 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Michael B. Miller is Associate Professor of History at Syracuse University.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction	3
I	New Stores	19
II	The "Grand Magasin"	48
Merchandise and the Mass Market	48
Finance and Purchasing	53
Organization	58
III	The Boucicauts	75
Building Organization Men: The Base	77
Building Organization Men: Management	112
Ritualization	121
Entrepreneurial Roles and Business Change	127
IV	The Directors	130
Faithful Continuators	130
Members of a Single Family	143
V	Selling Consumption	165
An Eighth Wonder	166
A Way of Life	178
VI	Selling the Store	190
Ambivalence and Hostility	190
A Model Community	215
Conclusion	231
Appendix	241
Bibliography	245
Index	259

Editorial Reviews

"Michael Miller ... is able to breathe life into [the store's] ambitious owners and directors, pile its counter high with goods mundane and exotic, and people its aisles with obsequious clerks and glittering-eyed shoppers.... [He] has written an absorbing study that can be read with pleasure by anyone interested in modern techniques of mass selling or in French culture before World War I."—-Jean T. Joughin, Business History Review

"Michael Miller has written a book that is both fascinating and original, about a large department store and its place not only in business history, but in the history of French society, culture, and bureaucracy."—-Eugen Weber, The Times Literary Supplement

From the Publisher

Michael Miller has written a book that is both fascinating and original, about a large department store and its place not only in business history, but in the history of French society, culture, and bureaucracy.
— Eugen Weber

The Times Literary Supplement

Michael Miller ... is able to breathe life into [the store's] ambitious owners and directors, pile its counter high with goods mundane and exotic, and people its aisles with obsequious clerks and glittering-eyed shoppers.... [He] has written an absorbing study that can be read with pleasure by anyone interested in modern techniques of mass selling or in French culture before World War I.
— Jean T. Joughin

Business History Review