Editing The Author in Literature Part 2 (section)

==== A Scene from War and Peace ====
These salons were mainly run by the most famous and prosperous women of the elite society of St. Petersburg. It was considered an obligation of the rich women to throw soirees, or parties of this kind where every influential personality from politics, arts, literature, and music would be invited.

In the pre-mass media, pre-mass publishing, and pre-internet era, these intellectual salons were the only places where young, poets, novelists, musicians, and artists could show off their talent. These salons made or broke artists and poets.

Getting invited to these ‘art scenes’ of the days was very important. The ladies who ran these salons may not necessarily be of great taste but they completed their social obligation in throwing off these soirees and inviting all the great artists of the day. These salons were known by the names of these ‘socialites’.

The poets, novelists, and artists visiting these balls and parties created some of the greatest works ever created analyzing human behavior in all its minutiae, both good and bad.

And even though their readership may be limited to one gender and to the elite during their times, they have given us gems which are quintessentially classical – independent of time and space. They are truly universal.

The breathtaking variety of aesthetic stories that the world had the luck to witness during the late half of the 18th and the 19th centuries is something to cherish. Dickens, Austen, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Pushkin, Chekhov, Turgenev, Poe, Melville, London, Twain, Proust, Flaubert, Maupassant, Saki, Akutagawa, etc. are just some of the very famous ones.