My Double Life is the autobiography of the French actress Sarah Bernhardt, who was internationally famed during her lifetime and afterwards as one of the classical theater s all-time greatest stars. Bernhardt s memoirs are composed with a novelist s (or actress s) sense of artistry and suspense that leaves no doubt of the charisma for which she was famed in her double life, both on- and off-stage. Yet at the same time as this book very consciously contributes to the crafting of her image, it also illuminates a whole era: not only the world of theater, but also the worlds of women, politics, society, Europe and America, and, indeed, of history making itself."