One of the institutions of the long 18th century that has most captured the imaginations of my co-author, friend, and fellow student of Adam Smith’s grand-tour years (1764-66) Alain Alcouffe and I are the famed salons of pre-revolutionary Paris. Among other things, the salons were famous for being presided by women and for being the center of the French Enlightenment, and as it happens, Adam Smith was not only in Paris for several months in 1766; correspondence and journal entries from three of Smith’s close contacts at the time (the Abbé Colbert, David Hume, and Horace Walpole) confirms that the Scottish moral philosopher and political economist encountered at least three of the leading salonnières of Paris during his extended 1766 sojourn in Paris, the Comtesse de Boufflers, Madame du Deffand, and the Duchesse d’Enville, and was thus most likely a guest at their famed salons. In addition, Smith’s principal place of residence in 1766 was located in close proximity to several of the salons of pre-revolutionary Paris. Accordingly, building on our previous work (Guerra-Pujol & Alcouffe, “Adam Smith in the City of Light”, Adam Smith Review, in press) as well as an 18th-century map of Paris, the Plan de Turgot (part of which is pictured below), in our next few posts Alain and I will chart Adam Smith’s proximity to several of the leading salons of pre-revolutionary Paris …