Sign up for my Amazons of Paris newsletter and find out:. These stuntwomen were daredevils not only in the circus ring but also in their lives. Jenny de Rahden endured a murder trial and the loss of her sight. I have more stories and lives to add to these accounts, as well as introducing you to the world of high-level European circus in the nineteenth century , where performers mingled with royalty while remaining outsiders, and everyone went to the ringside to see and be seen.
The more I work on these mini biographies, the harder I find it to be certain of biographical facts. I usually check multiple contemporary sources about the same events and I see errors that are carried forward by later texts and plenty of instances where there are two believable versions of an event.
They are a work in progress, and I try to make the ambiguities and contradictions clear. Now I had Belgian, German and Austrian digitised newspapers to work with, and I expanded out into birth certificates, marriage confirmations and death records, plus a novel or two. I did my best to navigate the mess of contradictory information available and to be open about the judgment calls I made but — boy… it was a rollercoaster ride. Paris Review Daily blogposts are meant to be 2, words max, and Nadja Spiegelman, my editor there , very kindly indulged me by letting me post far longer pieces.
When the reports cross the Atlantic they get even more scrambled — perhaps literally a game of Telegram. Will leap the table. Das Vaterland also says this in April Says Pour Toujours is a jumper. She had fallen from him in Pour Toujours was Irish, and had once somersaulted over a table jump with her and dislocated her shoulder.
Every time I think I know which it was, another source comes up. If you want to dive in and find out more about the aristocratic suitors then please proceed with caution. These families are sprawling and full of repeated names. All the males of the House of Reuss are named Heinrich Henry plus a number. In the elder line the numbering covers all male children of the elder House, and the numbers increase until is reached and then start again at 1. In the younger line the system is similar but the numbers increase until the end of the century before starting again at 1.
