Editing Department store (section)

===Origins in Parisian ''magasins de nouveautés''===
[[File:Au Bon Marché (vue générale - gravure).jpg|thumb|Au Bon Marché]]
The Paris department stores have roots in the ''magasin de nouveautés'', or [[novelty store]]; the first, the Tapis Rouge, was created in 1784.<ref>{{Citation|chapter=Discovery, Invention and Innovation|pages=1–31|publisher=Springer US|isbn=9780792393030|doi=10.1007/978-0-585-32028-1_1|title=Informational Society|year=1993}}</ref>  They flourished in the early 19th century. [[Balzac]] described their functioning in his novel ''[[César Birotteau]]''.  In the 1840s, with the arrival of the railroads in Paris and the increased number of shoppers they brought, they grew in size, and began to have large plate glass display windows, fixed prices and price tags, and advertising in newspapers.<ref name="Fierro (1996), pages 911–912">{{cite book|last=Fierro|first=Alfred|title=Histoire et Dictionnaire de Paris|year=1996|pages=911–912}}</ref>

A novelty shop called ''[[Le Bon Marché|Au Bon Marché]]'' had been founded in Paris in 1838 to sell items like lace, ribbons, sheets, mattresses, buttons, and umbrellas. It grew from {{convert|300|m2|ft2|abbr=on}} and 12 employees in 1838 to {{convert|50000|m2|ft2|abbr=on}} and 1,788 employees in 1879.  Boucicaut was famous for his marketing innovations; a reading room for husbands while their wives shopped; extensive newspaper advertising; entertainment for children; and six million catalogs sent out to customers. By 1880 half the employees were women; unmarried women employees lived in dormitories on the upper floors.<ref name="world">{{cite book| title=The World of Department Stores| author=Jan Whitaker| page=22| publisher=Vendome Press| place=New York| year=2011| isbn=978-0-86565-264-4}}</ref>

''Au Bon Marché'' soon had half a dozen or more competitors including [[Printemps]], founded in 1865; [[La Samaritaine]] (1869), Bazar de Hotel de Ville ([[Bazar de l'Hôtel de Ville|BHV]]); and [[Galeries Lafayette]] (1895).<ref name="Fierro (1996), pages 911–912" /><ref>{{cite book |first=Michael B. |last=Miller |title=The Bon Marché: Bourgeois Culture and the Department Store, 1869–1920 |location=London |publisher=Allen & Unwin |year=1981 |isbn=0-04-330316-1 }}</ref> The French gloried in the national prestige brought by the great Parisian stores.<ref name="Heidrun Homburg 1992 pp 183-219">{{cite journal |first=Heidrun |last=Homburg |title=Warenhausunternehmen und ihre Gründer in Frankreich und Deutschland Oder: Eine Diskrete Elite und Mancherlei Mythen |trans-title=Department store firms and their founders in France and Germany, or: a discreet elite and various myths |journal=Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte |year=1992 |volume=33 |issue=1 |pages=183–219 |doi=10.1524/jbwg.1992.33.1.185 |s2cid=201653161 }}</ref> The great writer [[Émile Zola]] (1840–1902) set his novel {{Lang|fr|[[Au Bonheur des Dames]]}} (1882–83) in the typical department store, making it a symbol of the new technology that was both improving society and devouring it.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Frans C. |last=Amelinckx |title=The Creation of Consumer Society in Zola's Ladies' Paradise |journal=Proceedings of the Western Society for French History |year=1995 |volume=22 |pages=17–21 }}</ref>