Steidlville

Beautiful, intelligent, quick-witted and highly talented, Gabrielle Réju, known as Réjane, was, along with Sarah Bernhardt, the most celebrated French actress of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A brilliantly luminous "queen of the boulevard," she performed in London, New York and Paris. Critics were dumb struck by her modern style of representation, described as Nerve art by contemporaries. Her greatest successes were in contemporary plays by Meilhac, Sardou, Bernstein and Bataille.
Unlike her friend and professional rival Sarah Bernhardt, Réjane — who ran her own popular theatre in Paris — has fallen into oblivion.
Réjane — Queen of the Boulevard is a book which puts Réjane into her rightful place in the history of La Belle Epoque. It includes photographs and studio portraits by such famous contemporaries as Paul Nadar and Charles Reutlinger, and a knowledgeable essay by François Baudot.