Common and Uncommon Scents: A Social History of Perfume

by Susan Stewart

Pleasant smells have long been associated not only with health, wealth and good hygiene but also sound moral character; bad smells indicate lack of cleanliness, ill health, poverty - and immorality.

Throughout history, people have applied scents to their bodies and clothing. They have carried perfumed objects, worn scented jewelry, sent scented letters, even exchanged scented coins. Aromas have been used to perfume private houses and public spaces from the ancient world to today.Gaining an understanding of how scents were used allows us to get up close and personal to daily life in any given period.

Some uses of scent are particularly the smell of the impressive quantities of blood spilt in the Colosseum of Ancient Rome was masked by a sprinkler system discharging saffron into the arena. Cosmus the perfumier's scented pastilles designed to hide bad breath were famous enough to be lauded by the poet Martial. Leather gloves in the Renaissance period stank to high heaven and had to be perfumed. The first designer perfume was created by the fashion designer Paul Poiret in 1920, who scented the hems of the dresses in his collection. The 'democritization' of perfume by the introduction of synthetic scent is a fascinating story in itself.

Susan Stewart's analysis is in line with the very latest research into sensory history, tailored to the general reader.

Genres: Nonfiction, History

288 pages, Hardcover

Published February 15, 2023

About the author

Susan Stewart (born 1952) is an American poet, university professor and literary critic.

Professor Stewart holds degrees from Dickinson College (B.A. in English and Anthropology), the Johns Hopkins University (M.F.A. in Poetics) and the University of Pennsylvania (Ph.D. in Folklore). She teaches the history of poetry, aesthetics, and the philosophy of literature, most recently at Princeton University.

Her poems have appeared in many journals including: The American Poetry Review, The Paris Review, Poetry, Tri-Quarterly, Gettysburg Review, Harper's, Georgia Review, Ploughshares, and Beloit Poetry Journal.

In the late 2000s she collaborated with composer James Primosch on a song cycle commissioned by the Chicago Symphony that premiered in the fall of 2009. She has served on the judging panel of the Wallace Stevens Award on six occasions.

In 2005 Professor Stewart was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

About her work, the poet and critic Allen Grossman has written, "Stewart has built a poetic syntax capable of conveying an utterly singular account of consciousness, by the light of which it is possible to see the structure of the human world with a new clarity and an unforeseen precision, possible only in her presence and by means of her art."

(from Wikipedia)