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.
