Literary drawing rooms are a cultural phenomenon that originated in the noble salons of the XVIII century. They are associated with the history of the formation of the literary language, the education of aesthetic taste, acquaintance with the best achievements of literature and culture.

Salons are a vivid phenomenon of the secular and literary life of the Russian educated society of the first decades of the XIX century.
Russian salons were closely associated with the Golden Age era, in its unique atmosphere they flourished and with it declined. The secular literary salon arises when a cultural elite is formed in Russian society — comprehensively educated and impeccably educated people. These people want to enjoy communicating with their peers and pleasant interlocutors, including ladies. Noble women of the early 19th century are much freer and more independent than their grandmothers; many of them receive a good education, know foreign languages, read a lot and are able to maintain an interesting conversation. According to the idea of the ideal of a woman, which is being formed in Russian literature and the literary environment of the first third of the XIX century, she should be the embodiment of beauty, a moral tuning fork and an arbiter of artistic taste — all those qualities that are necessary for the hostess of the salon. It was during the Golden Age in Russia that a number of brilliant women appeared who had a decisive influence on the flourishing of salon culture: Volkonskaya, Golitsyna, Karamzina, Smirnova-Rosset, Ponomareva, Elagina, Rostopchina.

Russian salons were created on the model of the famous Parisian salons, well known to Russian aristocrats both in literature and according to their own observations. The cultural model, which was gradually formed in France over many decades, was implemented in Russia very quickly and successfully. The brilliant salons of Moscow and St. Petersburg, obviously, were not inferior to the famous European models. They gathered a select society, the level of intellectual and ethical demands of which far exceeded the average level of the Russian nobility. In the 1820s, when literature began to occupy a dominant position in Russian culture, the salon became the center of literary life. Almost all the activities and interests of the society gathered in the salons were connected with literature and poetry in one way or another. Russian salons are traditionally called "literary", although there is a lot of convention in this. Contemporaries did not separate secular and literary salons, the orientation of the salon (its greater or lesser "literariness") was determined by the composition of its participants and their interests. It is important to note that literature was not a separate area of the salon's life, it permeated it all. Artificially tearing apart literary interests and other traditional hobbies and activities of salon visitors, we involuntarily distort the real picture of the life of that society.

A characteristic feature of salon communication was a relaxed combination of serious intellectual conversations and almost childish fun. The guests were happy to engage in so-called secular games: they composed charades, live, i.e. theatrical, charades. In this case, hints of the meaning of the parts of the word were given not in a verbal description, but in a staged scene.