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A drawing room is a room in a house where visitors may be entertained, and an alternative name for a living room. The name is derived from the 16th-century terms withdrawing room and withdrawing chamber, which remained in use through the 17th century. The term "drawing room" made its first written appearance in 1642.http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/57558 "drawing-room", Oxford English Dictionary, "1642 Ld. Sunderland Let. to Wife, The king..is very cheerful, and by the bawdy discourse I thought I had been in the drawing room." In a large 16th- to early 18th-century English house, a withdrawing room was a room to which the owner of the house, his wife, or a distinguished guest who was occupying one of the main apartments in the house could "withdraw" for more privacy. It was often off the great chamber (or the great chamber's descendant, the state room) and usually led to a formal, or "state" bedroom.Nicholas Cooper, Houses of the Gentry 1480–1680 (English Heritage) 1999: "Parlours and withdrawing rooms 289–93.
In modern houses, the term may be used as a convenient name for a second or further reception room, but no particular function is associated with the name.
During the American Civil War, in the White House of the Confederacy in Richmond, Virginia, the drawing room was off the Parlour where CSA President Jefferson Davis greeted his guests. At the conclusion of these greetings, the men remained in the parlor to talk politics and the women withdrew to the drawing room for their own conversation. This was common practice in the affluent circles of the Southern United States.
In 1865, an architectural manual in England defined "drawing room" in this way: Kerr, Robert. The Gentleman's House: or, How to Plan English Residences, from the Parsonage to the Palace; with Tables of Accommodation and Cost, and a Series of Selected Plans. London: John Murray, 1865, p. 107.
Until the mid-twentieth century, after a dinner the ladies of a dinner party withdrew to the drawing room, leaving the gentlemen at table, where the tablecloth was removed. After an interval of conversation, often accompanied by brandy or port and sometimes cigars, the gentlemen rejoined the ladies in the drawing room.
The term drawing room is not used as widely as it once was, and tends to be used in Britain only by those who also have other reception rooms, such as a morning room, a 19th-century designation for a sitting room, often with east-facing exposure, suited for daytime calls, or the middle-class living room, a late-19th-century designation for a room in which to relax. Hence the drawing room is the smartest room in the house, usually used by the adults of the family when entertaining. This term is widely used in India and Pakistan, probably dating from the colonial days, in the larger urban houses of the cities where there are many rooms.
The term parlour initially designated the more modest reception rooms of the middle classes, but usage changed in the UK as homeowners sought to identify with the grander homes of the wealthy. Parlor remained the common usage in North America into the early 20th century. In French usage the word salon, previously designating a state room, began to be used for a drawing room in the early part of the 19th century, reflecting the salon social gatherings that had become popular in the preceding decades.
In North America, it meant a room in which slept three or more persons, with a private washroom. "Three is no crowd... In the Drawing Room Built by Pullman-Standard," 1945 magazine ad for Pullman sleeping cars, Ad*Access, Duke University Libraries Digital Collections, accessed 9 November 2013. Although Amtrak has retired its sleeping cars that were built with drawing rooms, they are still used by Via Rail Canada. The traditional nomenclature is seen as archaic, hence they are marketed as "triple bedrooms".
Drawing room comedy typically features wit and verbal banter among wealthy, leisured, genteel, upper class characters. Drawing room comedy is also sometimes called the "comedy of manners". Oscar Wilde's 1895 The Importance of Being Earnest and several of the plays of Noël Coward are typical works of the genre. George Bernard Shaw's 1919 Heartbreak House adds an undercurrent of social criticism to the genre. Cary Grant appeared in a number of filmed drawing-room comedies. Ernst Lubitsch was especially known as a director of drawing room comedies.
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