This use of the word bohemian first appeared in the English language in the nineteenth century to describe the non-traditional lifestyles of marginalized and impoverished artists, writers, journalists, musicians, and actors in major European cities.
Bohemians were associated with unorthodox or anti-establishment political or social viewpoints, which often were expressed through free love, frugality, and—in some cases—voluntary poverty. A more economically privileged, wealthy, or even aristocratic bohemian circle is sometimes referred to as haute bohème (literally "high Bohemia").
The term Bohemianism emerged in France in the early nineteenth century when artists and creators began to concentrate in the lower-rent, lower class, Romani neighborhoods. Bohémien was a common term for the Romani people of France, who were mistakenly thought to have reached France in the 15th century via Bohemia (the western part of modern Czech Republic), at that time a largely proto-Protestant country and considered heretical by many Roman Catholics.
Bibliography
Easton, Malcolm (1964). Artists and Writers in Paris. The Bohemian Idea, 1803–1867 (ASIN B0016A7CJA ed.). London: Arnold.Graña, César (1964). Bohemian versus Bourgeois: French Society and the French Man of Letters in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-00736-8.Parry, Albert. (2005.) Garretts & Pretenders: A History of Bohemianism in America, Cosimo, Inc. ISBN 1-59605-090-XStansell, Christine (2000). American Moderns: Bohemian New York and the Creation of a New Century. Henry Holt & Company. ISBN 0-8050-4847-2.Wilson, Elizabeth (2002). Bohemians: The Glamorous Outcasts. Tauris Parke Paperbacks. ISBN 1-86064-782-0.
Further reading
Levin, Joanna (2010). Bohemia in America, 1858–1920. Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-6083-6.Siegel, Jerrold (1999). Bohemian Paris: Culture, Politics, and the Boundaries of Bourgeois Life, 1830–1930. The Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 978-0-8018-6063-8.Tarnoff, Benjamin (2014) The Bohemians: Mark Twain and the San Francisco Writers Who Reinvented American Literature. Penguin Books. ISBN 978-1594204739.