Pierre J.-B. d’Aussy, a historian of everyday life in the age of the Enlightenment

Pierre J.-B. Legrand d’Aussy’s book entitled “La Vie quotidienne” somehow heralded the later popular collection published by Hachette in the 20th century. Yet he cannot be credited for the concept itself. From the Antiquity onwards, historians did differentiate the narratives of events around prominent figures from the changes in the ways of life of human societies. D’Aussy’s book aims to precisely analyse the changes in food habits in France as a total fact related to evolutions both in the production and in tastes. By making use of coffee as a case in point of fashionable foodstuffs, Legrand d’Aussy points up the influence of social mechanisms, both imitation and desire of distinction, in accounting for the blooming of coffee shops across Europe in the 18th century.