1. The last specialised study of Deburau (the most famous and influential mime actor of all time) in French or English was the biography by Tristan Rémy in 1954, Jean-Gaspard Deburau.

2. This book is very wide-ranging: starting with Deburau’s Pierrot figure, it discusses nineteenth-century theatre, novels, poetry, society, and twentieth-century echoes in cinema and modern mime.

3. Readers who think they know who and what ‘Pierrot’ is (and was) will be surprised by what they find in this book; for example, his relation to colonialism and race.

4. There are 26 figures in the book, all of them discussed in depth.

5. Deburau is well-known among scholars, and the wider public know his image even if they can’t necessarily put a name to it, but he has never been studied through such a wide range of manuscript as well as published sources, many of them identified for the first time.