Antoine Lilti is a historian of social and cultural history whose work primarily examines the emergence and evolution of the concept of celebrity. His analyses focus on how the idea of the public figure was constructed during the 18th and 19th centuries and the mechanisms that gave rise to modern fame. Lilti investigates the transformations in social relations and cultural practices that defined a new era of public life. His writing is valued for its depth and its ability to reveal hidden connections between historical phenomena.
The World of the Salons is a revisionist study of the French salon of the eighteenth century, arguing that it was a place governed by social hierarchy, not equality, connected to the world of the Court, and not the fount of the Enlightenment as has traditionally been believed.