Box 1

Scope and Contents

Comic postcard of female impersonator in the traditional garb of a Poitevin peasant woman. Addressed to Mademoiselle Legras Nadel.

Scope and Contents

Series of two postcards (with card 174) representing scenes and characters from La Mérine à Nastasie (1902), a play by Yann Saint- Acer, written in the Saintongeais dialect of the west coast of France.

Scope and Contents

Series of two postcards (with card 173) representing scenes and characters from La Mérine à Nastasie (1902), a play by Yann Saint-Acer, written in the Saintongeais dialect of the west coast of France.

Scope and Contents

Series of three postcards representing humorous scenes from the daily life of an older woman played by a female impersonator. Addressed to Louise Hautain.

Scope and Contents

Addressed to Auguste Morel. Woman dressed as a chef wearing a toque, men's coat and men's 18th-century kneepants and hose while holding up a fluted cake pan. She leans against a decor suggesting a country kitchen. Printed in red at the bottom of the recto is a recipe for Swiss cake.

Scope and Contents

Female impersonator holding a porcelain doll and dressed as a nanny in a lace cap and apron.

Scope and Contents

Series of five comic postcards depicting a male impersonator as a woman of Marseilles. Each card has a humorous caption giving a line of dialog. Three cards (numbered 370, 373 and 374), show a fishwife carrying a scale for weighing her goods.

COLLECTION DESCRIPTION From the Collection: Postcards portraying cross-dressing and female and male impersonators in France, Sweden, Austria, Spain, Belgium, the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, Italy, and Romania. Postcards include photographic and photomechanical prints, some hand-colored. All are printed between circa 1900 and 1930 and depict performers on amateur, café-concert, music-hall, and legitimate stages at the high-point of cross-dressing as a form of entertainment. Many depict gallant visual narratives of...

Scope and Contents

Novelty card montage of three photos of the same woman dressed in top hat, tails and knee britches gesturing to a rabbit sitting next to her on a bench. May represent a musical hall trained animal act. Message on verso addressed to "Mon cher Pierre" and signed "Jeanne."

Scope and Contents

Eighteenth-century seduction scene: woman dressed as a male aristocrat woos a peasant-girl flower-seller against a studio backdrop of a sylvan scene.