More on the Sweet Scent of Literature

After my last post I was left wondering about what other literary scents we could get our hands on. So I did a little digging just as much for you, dear reader, as for myself and these are my results.

Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, an online store specializing in gothic scents, is selling perfumes based off the novels of Neil Gaiman. They also offer perfumes with some literary, poetic, and mythical inspirations such as:
Highwayman
Hymn to Proserpine
I Died For Beauty
Incantation
Inferno
Kubla Khan
The Black Tower
La Bella Donna Della Mia Mente
Lampades
Leanan Sidhe (W.B. Yeats)
Ode On Melancholy
Ozymandias
Penny Dreadful (titled after the penny dreadful novels of yesteryear)
Poisoned Apple (from Snow White)
The Raven (Edgar Allan Poe)
Scherezade (1,001 Nights)
Tavern of Hell
Tempest
Twenty-One (Dorothy Parker - whose own favorite scent was Coty's Chypre)
Ulalume
Wilde
They also offer a collection called the mad tea party that features perfumes named for the characters in Alice in Wonderland

Perfumer Laura Tonatto as a promotion for a bookshop created five perfumes based on scents described in classic works like Swann's Way by Marcel Proust; Madame Bovary by Flaubert; The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilder; Perfume by Patrick Suskind; and Gabrielle D'Annunzio's The Child of Pleasure.

Alice in Wonderland
Bath and Body Works is offering scented bulbs
(if fact they have an entire limited edition line right now)
Konstantin of parfums d'Imperfiction available on his own site as well as Aus Leibe Zum Duft
(there you can also find his perfume based on the book Eleven Minutes)

Disney is offering perfume featuring characters from children's stories like Peter Pan, Cinderella, and Bambi. For a full list and availability visit here.

Apparently even J.K. Rowlings Harry Potter has had a perfume all of it's own as well.

For excerpts from literature involving scent I recommend scented pages. A few more can also be found at Memory and Desire.

For poems with the theme of perfume visit poetry-chaikhana.

And for anyone who has not read of seen Perfume: The Story of a Murderer I recommend you procure it in whatever way you see fit post haste!

Book Lovers Perfume

Christopher Brosius hates perfume, and I mean really hates perfume:

"I hate perfume.
Perfume is too often an ethereal corset trapping everyone in the same unnatural shape
A lazy and inelegant concession to fashionable ego
Too often a substitute for true allure and style
An opaque shell concealing everything – revealing nothing
A childish masque hiding the timid and unimaginative
An arrogant slap in the face from across the room
People who smell like everyone else disgust me
* * * * * * *
Perfume is a veil that reveals the soul
Perfume is the fanfare of our individuality sounding differently to everyone who listens
Perfume is a signpost to our true selves – a different journey for the brave to travel
Perfume is the weather of our inner world bringing life to a personal landscape
Perfume is an art that shows us who we can be if we dare – an invisible portrait of who we are
Perfume is discovered fully only by our lovers when we are together - naked
* * * * * * *
I encourage you to be yourself, expand yourself and please yourself
Allow yourself the luxury of your own vision
Perfume is an adventure I encourage you to explore
I love making perfume
I love being a perfumer"

What on earth does perfume have to do with books? CBIhateperfume in so many words is the new Demeter Fragrances (for those of you who do not Demeter their fragrances include scents like tomato, dirt, baby powder, laundromat, rain, and caramel.) But unlike Demeter CB uses oil and water as a base for the perfume.

CB also offers something of particular interest to bibliophiles. A scent by the name of "in the library"

Follow your nose