Portraits of the actress Sarah Bernhardt made at the Nadar studio in Paris, from the late Second Empire to the eve of the 1920s. The pictures show her both in street dress and in costume for favourite stage roles. Bernhardt was among the studio's most frequent sitters among actors, and the selection also works as a record of French theatre across those decades. Black-and-white studio portraits by the Nadar studio, credited to Gaspard-Félix Tournachon and the studio that carried his name, make up the plates; one bookseller listing counts 37 photographic portraits. Pierre Spivakoff supplies a French text on Bernhardt's character, the high points of her career and her scandal-filled biography, as well as her afterlife in posters, postcards and comic strips. The book is a portrait monograph with accompanying essay, not an exhibition catalogue.