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Liane De Pougy
Liane de Pougy (born Anne-Marie Chassaigne, 2 July 1869 – 26 December 1950), was a Folies Bergère vedette and dancer renowned as one of Paris's most beautiful and notorious courtesans. Early life and marriage Anne-Marie Chassaigne was born in La Flèche, Sarthe, France, the daughter of Pierre Blaise Eugène Chassaigne and his Spanish-French wife Aimée Lopez. She had an older brother, Pierre (1862–1921). She was raised in a nunnery. At the age of 16, she ran off with Joseph Armand Henri Pourpe, a naval officer, whom she married after getting pregnant. The baby was named Marc Pourpe. De Pougy described herself as a terrible mother, saying, "My son was like a living doll given to a little girl." She also admitted she would have preferred the baby to be a girl ‘because of the dresses and the curly hair’. Marc grew up to volunteer as an airman in World War I and was killed on 2 December 1914 near Villers-Brettoneux. The marriage was not a happy one. Anne-Marie late ...
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Paul Nadar
Gaspard-Félix Tournachon (5 April 1820 – 20 March 1910), known by the pseudonym Nadar, was a French photographer, caricaturist, journalist, novelist, balloonist, and proponent of heavier-than-air flight. In 1858, he became the first person to take aerial photographs. Photographic portraits by Nadar are held by many of the great national collections of photographs. His son, Paul Nadar (1856–1939), continued the studio after his death. Life Gaspard-Félix Tournachon (also known as Nadar) was born in early April 1820 in Paris, though some sources state he was born in Lyon. His father, Victor Tournachon, was a printer and bookseller. Nadar began to study medicine but quit for economic reasons after his father's death. Nadar started working as a caricaturist and novelist for various newspapers. He fell in with the Parisian bohemian group of Gérard de Nerval, Charles Baudelaire, and Théodore de Banville. His friends picked a nickname for him, perhaps by a playful habit of ad ...
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Valtesse De La Bigne
Émilie-Louise Delabigne, known as countess Valtesse de La Bigne (1848, in Paris – 29 July 1910, in Ville-d'Avray) was a French courtesan and demi-mondaine. Though born to a working-class family in Paris, she rose through the social ranks and was a supporter of painters, while creating a space for women to participate in the art world through her collecting and . Life Youth and entry into prostitution One of six siblings, Émilie-Louise was the daughter of a violent alcoholic father and Émilie Delabigne, a laundry maid from Normandy who was also involved in sex work. She worked in a Paris sweet shop at age 10 and a dress shop at 13, when she was raped in the street by an older man. She modelled for the painter Corot, whose studio was in the district where she lived. At a young age she began work as a prostitute, lorette (respectable mistress), between the lower-class streetwalker or grisette and upper-class courtesan. Nevertheless, this was still clandestine prostitution, ...
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Natalie Clifford Barney
Natalie Clifford Barney (October 31, 1876 – February 2, 1972) was an American writer who hosted a salon (gathering), literary salon at her home in Paris that brought together French and international writers. She influenced other authors through her salon and also with her poetry, plays, and epigrams, often thematically tied to her lesbianism and feminism. Barney was born into a wealthy family. She was partly educated in France, and expressed a desire from a young age to live openly as a lesbian. She moved to France with her first romantic partner, Eva Palmer. Inspired by the work of Sappho, Barney began publishing love poems to women under her own name as early as 1900. Writing in both French and English, she supported feminism and pacifism. She opposed monogamy and had many overlapping long and short-term relationships, including on-and-off romances with poet Renée Vivien and courtesan Liane de Pougy and longer relationships with writer Élisabeth de Gramont and painter Roma ...
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Lesbian
A lesbian is a Homosexuality, homosexual woman.Zimmerman, p. 453. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate nouns with female homosexuality or same-sex attraction. The concept of "lesbian" to differentiate women with a shared sexual orientation evolved in the 20th century. Throughout history, women have not had the same freedom or independence as men to pursue homosexual relationships, but neither have they met the same harsh punishment as homosexual men in some societies. Instead, lesbian relationships have often been regarded as harmless, unless a participant attempts to assert privileges traditionally enjoyed by men. As a result, little in history was documented to give an accurate description of how female homosexuality was expressed. When early sexologists in the late 19th century began to categorize and describe homosexual behavior, hampere ...
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Drag Queen
A drag queen is a person, usually male, who uses drag clothing and makeup to imitate and often exaggerate female gender signifiers and gender roles for entertainment purposes. Historically, drag queens have usually been gay men, and part of gay culture. People partake in the activity of ''doing drag'' for reasons ranging from self-expression to mainstream performance. Drag shows frequently include lip-syncing, live singing, and dancing. They occur at events like LGBT pride parades, carnivals and drag pageants and in venues such as cabarets and nightclubs. Drag queens vary by type, culture, and dedication, from professionals who star in films and spend a lot of their time in their drag persona, to people who do drag only occasionally. Those who do occasional drag may be from other backgrounds than the LGBT community. There is a long history of folkloric and theatrical crossdressing that involves people of all orientations. Not everyone who does drag at some point in the ...
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Herbert Charles Pollitt
Herbert Charles Pollitt (July 20, 1871 – 1942), also known as Jerome Pollitt, was a patron of the arts and on-stage female impersonator who performed as Diane de Rougy (an homage to Liane de Pougy). He became notorious as a Cambridge undergraduate due to his taste for Decadent art and literature, and was immortalised as the eponymous hero of an E.F. Benson novel (''The Babe B.A.'') in 1896. He became a very close friend of the artist Aubrey Beardsley, and had a brief but significant relationship with the occultist Aleister Crowley. Following his time at Cambridge, Pollitt moved to London and saw service in the First World War as a lance-corporal. He died in 1942. Early life and education Pollitt was the son of Charles Pollitt, the proprietor of ''The Westmorland Gazette'' and his wife, Jane. He attended Heversham school, then went on to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1889. He gained his BA in 1892 and his MA in 1896. At Cambridge, he became president of Footlights, the Cambri ...
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Sarah Bernhardt
Sarah Bernhardt (; born Henriette-Rosine Bernard; 22 or 23 October 1844 – 26 March 1923) was a French stage actress who starred in some of the most popular French plays of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including '' La Dame Aux Camelias'' by Alexandre Dumas ''fils''; ''Ruy Blas'' by Victor Hugo, ''Fédora'' and ''La Tosca'' by Victorien Sardou, and '' L'Aiglon'' by Edmond Rostand. She also played male roles, including Shakespeare's Hamlet. Rostand called her "the queen of the pose and the princess of the gesture", while Hugo praised her "golden voice". She made several theatrical tours around the world, and was one of the first prominent actresses to make sound recordings and to act in motion pictures. She is also linked with the success of artist Alphonse Mucha, whose work she helped to publicize. Mucha would become one of the most sought-after artists of this period for his Art Nouveau style. Biography Early life Henriette-Rosine Bernard was born at 5 rue de L ...
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Émilienne D'Alençon
Émilienne d'Alençon (17 July 1870 – 14 February 1945) was a French dancer, actress, and courtesan. Biography Born in Paris, d'Alençon made her début at the Cirque d'été in 1889 before appearing at the Casino de Paris, Menus-Plaisirs, Folies Bergère, Paris Scala and the Théâtre des Variétés. Among her earlier shows were ''Paris Boulevards'', ''Vénus d'Arles'' and ''Que d'eau Que d'eau''. She appeared in ''La Belle et la Bête'' at the Folies Bergères and she danced in the ballet ''The Red Slippers'' in London. She also performed as a dancer at the Paris Olympia in ''Faust'' and ''Grand Ballet Féerie''. In 1892, she came on stage as a snake dancer. Renowned as a courtesan, she was involved in a number of affairs including one with the industrialist Étienne Balsan. In 1895, she married the jockey Percy Woodland. Émilienne d'Alençon left the stage in 1906 and invested in horse racing. After losing her fortune on drugs and gambling in 1931, she was forced to se ...
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Mathilde De Morny
Mathilde de Morny (26 May 1863 – 29 June 1944) was a French aristocrat and artist. Morny was also known by the nickname "Missy" or by the artistic pseudonym "Yssim" (an anagram of Missy), or as "Max", "Uncle Max" (french: Oncle Max), or "Monsieur le Marquis". Active as a sculptor and painter, Morny studied under Comte Saint-Cène and the sculptor Édouard-Gustave-Louis Millet de Marcilly. Early life Morny was the fourth and final child of Charles de Morny, Duke of Morny and Sofia Sergeyevna Trubetskaya. Charles was the half-brother of Napoleon III, whilst Sofia may have been the illegitimate daughter of Nicholas I of Russia. As a teenager, Morny had adhered to sartorial convention. An 1882 magazine article describes the newlywed marquise as wearing "a dress of the very palest mauve, mixed tulle and silk," adding that Morny "is not exactly pretty, but has a most original face, being very pale, with a very set expression, the darkest eyes possible, and quantities of very fair hai ...
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La Belle Otero
Agustina del Carmen Otero Iglesias (4 November 1868 – 10 April 1965), better known as Carolina Otero or La Belle Otero, was a Spanish actress, dancer and courtesan. She had a reputation for great beauty and was famous for her numerous lovers. Biography Early years Agustina del Carmen Otero Iglesias was born in Valga (Pontevedra), Galicia, Spain, daughter of a Spanish single mother, Carmen Otero Iglesias (1844–1903), and a Greek army officer, named Carasson.''Les Souvenirs et la Vie Intime de la Belle Otero''
Place des Libraires
Her family was impoverished, and as a child she moved to



Demimondaine
is French for "half-world". The term derives from a play called , by Alexandre Dumas , published in 1855. The play dealt with the way that prostitution at that time threatened the institution of marriage. The was the world occupied by elite men and the women who entertained them and whom they kept, the pleasure-loving and dangerous world Dumas immortalized in the 1848 novel and its many adaptations. Demimondaine became a synonym for a courtesan or a prostitute who moved in these circles—or for a woman of social standing with the power to thumb her nose at convention and throw herself into the hedonistic nightlife. A woman who made that choice would soon find her social status lost, as she became . The 1958 film '' Gigi'', based on a 1944 novella by Colette, vividly portrays the world of the demimonde near the end of its existence. Gigi's Aunt Alicia, a legendary courtesan now enjoying a wealthy retirement, trains her teenage niece in elegant manners and deportment and the va ...
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Au Bois De Boulogne Vanity Fair 1897-06-03
Au, AU, au or a.u. may refer to: Science and technology Computing * .au, the internet country code for Australia * Au file format, Sun Microsystems' audio format * Audio Units, a system level plug-in architecture from Apple Computer * Adobe Audition, a sound editor program * Windows Update or Automatic Updates, in Microsoft Windows * Windows 10 Anniversary Update, of August 2016a * Gold, symbol Au (from Latin ), a chemical element * Absorbance unit, a reporting unit in spectroscopy * Atomic units, a system of units convenient for atomic physics and other fields * Ångström unit, a unit of length equal to 10−10 m or 0.1 nanometre. * Astronomical unit, a unit of length often used in Solar System astronomy, an approximation for the average distance between the Earth and the Sun * Arbitrary unit, a relative placeholder unit for when the actual value of a measurement is unknown or unimportant ("a.u." is deprecated, use "arb. unit" instead) Arts and entertainment Music * AU (b ...
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