Inscription: "Addressed to Charles Ventre (greeted as “Mon joli” or “mon petit”). Brief message on recto of all cards signed “ta Jeanette.” Three cards have longer love notes on the verso. Set of five postcards with a photo narrative of an 18th-century seduction scene involving a marquis and marquise: A woman dressed as a male aristocrat woos a female aristocrat in a studio-set formal garden. Each card includes a brief caption on near lower margin of the recto with a line of dialog. The first scene shows the female aristocrat seated by herself reading a book; the male aristocrat arrives and ultimately persuades her in the final scene: “Mettons en action le roman!” Undivided verso headed “Union Postale Universelle / Carte Postale” (with “postcard” also indicated in six other languages). The series thus dates to earlier than 1903, when postal regulations where changed to permit both a message and an address on the verso of postcards. Postage stamp folded from recto to verso on all cards; postmark on recto of four cards and verso of one card; minor creasing to upper margin of two cards.
Cite As:
Postcards of female and male impersonators and cross-dressing, #7778. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.
This image is believed to be in the public domain in the United States by virtue of publication date, and is presented by Cornell University Library under the Guidelines for Using Text, Images, Audio, and Video from Cornell University Library Collections, http://hdl.handle.net/1813.001/CULCopyright. This collection was digitized by Cornell University Library in 2019 from materials held in the Rare and Manuscript Collections, with funding from a Digital Collections in Arts and Sciences Grant to Professor Durba Ghosh and Brenda Marston, Curator of the Human Sexuality Collection. For more information about this image, please contact the Rare and Manuscript Collections at rareref@cornell.edu. Responsibility for making an independent legal assessment of an item and securing any necessary permissions ultimately rests with persons desiring to use the item.
