Harold George Scott captures the most memorable moments of Lelia Haller�s career with lavish illustrations and photographs. A pictorial biography of one of the twentieth century�s most notable ballerinas, Lelia documents the career of the only American honored as premi�re danseuse of the Paris Op�ra. Lelia�s experience in the world of dance takes her from beginnings in New Orleans to Germany, Spain, France, Italy, the Netherlands, England, and back to New Orleans, where she opened Studio de Danse. On these travels, she danced alongside other great dancers--such as Italian ballerina, Carlotta Zambelli--and trained under Russian ballet master, Nicolas Legat.

In Lelia's Kiss, Laura Giannetti offers a new perspective on the way gender and marriage were portrayed, imagined, and critiqued on stage during the Italian Renaissance. Going beyond the traditional canon, Giannetti focuses her study on the social and cultural scripts found in a wide array of comedies of the period to reveal the relativity of sex and gender roles and their cultural construction in Renaissance society. Giannetti argues that the comedic dialogue and cross-dressing characters so prevalent in Italian Renaissance comedies played with the presuppositions of the day and engaged with contemporary social norms, expectations, and desires. Cross-dressing female characters reveal the relativity of sex and gender roles, and also present a vision of female empowerment. At the same time, cross-dressing male characters suggest a unique perception of the male life cycle that was more uncertain and contested than often assumed, and show more broadly how masculinity was also socially and culturally constructed. In discussing marriage, sexuality, and gender roles, the comedies deploy a social scripting that not only reflects and comments on the everyday life of the time, but also interacts with it with playful humor and revealing insight.

"Never forget, my dear child, that life is made of days, and no matter how many days you were gifted with, you should strive to enjoy every single one of them. When you have given your love and attention to your family and friends, it will still be overflowing, so pay attention to the ideals you care about, to the people whose needs call out to you, to the human race, to the universe itself. Energy spent in activities that don't touch your soul is wasted, and those activities will drag along for a while, only to be abandoned when the first justification presents itself. When you put your heart into something you love however, not a single obstacle can ever stand against it. It may not always be easy, but you can't let go of it, because it is a part of who you are, your purpose." Letters to Lelia - Chapter Twenty Four: Love. Always.

Soon to be a Netflix series starring Octavia Spencer, On Her Own Ground is the first full-scale biography of “one of the great success stories of American history” (The Philadelphia Inquirer), Madam C.J. Walker—the legendary African American entrepreneur and philanthropist—by her great-great-granddaughter, A’Lelia Bundles. The daughter of formerly enslaved parents, Sarah Breedlove—who would become known as Madam C. J. Walker—was orphaned at seven, married at fourteen, and widowed at twenty. She spent the better part of the next two decades laboring as a washerwoman for $1.50 a week. Then—with the discovery of a revolutionary hair care formula for black women—everything changed. By her death in 1919, Walker managed to overcome astonishing odds: building a storied beauty empire from the ground up, amassing wealth unprecedented among black women, and devoting her life to philanthropy and social activism. Along the way, she formed friendships with great early-twentieth-century political figures such as Ida B. Wells, Mary McLeod Bethune, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Booker T. Washington.

Regarded as one of Sand's best novels, Lélia is an important document in the evolution of women's consciousness. Published in 1833, when Sand was 29, it stunned Victorians by advocating the same standard of morality for men and women and by suggesting that both the prostitute and the married woman were slaves to male desire. Sand also questioned monogamy, fidelity, and monastic celibacy. She later made an unsuccessful attempt to revise the book and to expunge its despair and skepticism. Although Sand wrote copiously, until recently only a handful of her books were available in English. This first English translation of Lélia is an excellent rendering, capturing the raptures, the mysticism, and the nineteenth-century flavor ot its eternally fascinating subject.