Notes: Adah Isaacs Menken, performer and poet, has a short but sensational career as an actress, her fame due much to her own genius for self-promotion. She played a man in Byron’s Mazeppa, wearing a flesh-colored body stocking; she wore her hair short, smoked at her press conferences, and flaunted her connections with famous men. She married four times, her second to Alexander Isaacs Menken, a Jew for whom she converted; she remained in the faith until her death. Her origins are disputed, with reports of lineage that includes a Spanish Jewish father, a New Orleans creole mother, and a free Black father.
Napoleon Sarony made his career in New York, beginning in the mid- to late-1860’s, as a photographer to the stars of the growing theatrical industry. Both the stars and the photographer would use the portraits for publicity and profit.