The Bath Keepers, v.2

The Bath Keepers, Volume 2 is the second volume of a French popular novel by Charles Paul de Kock (1793-1871). De Kock produced an enormous output of comic and romantic novels set in contemporary Paris and the surrounding French countryside across the middle decades of the nineteenth century.

The bath keepers of the title refers to the proprietors of public bathing establishments, which were a considerable part of nineteenth century Parisian urban life. The public baths served a population whose home arrangements typically lacked private bathing facilities, and the bath establishments became wide social institutions where various classes of Parisians encountered each other.

De Kock uses the bath establishment setting for his typical comic and romantic plot material. The novel includes the various character types that de Kock made his speciality including young Parisian women of various social positions, men pursuing romantic and commercial interests, comic minor characters drawn from working-class Parisian life, and the broader Parisian social texture that his novels recorded across his long career.