Réjane

Beautiful, smart, quick-witted and highly talented, Gabrielle Reju, known as Réjane, was - along with Sarah Bernhardt - the most celebrated French actress of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A luminous "queen of the boulevard", she galvanized audiences in New York, London and Paris with her forward-looking style of representation, described by her contemporaries as "Nerve Art". She found her greatest successes in contemporary plays by such authors as Meilhac, Sardou, Bernstein and Bataille. But unlike her friend and rival Bernhardt, Réjane has largely disappeared from memory. It is the mission of Réjane: Queen of the Boulevard to help restore her to her rightful place in history. The book begins with an essay by François Baudot, and includes scene photographs by such renowned contemporaries as Paul Nadar and Charles Reutlinger. These images commemorate a woman who personifies like no one else "La Parisienne" and the days of "La Belle Epoque".