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Picturing a World

Fluffy Ruffles

And now for a working woman of a different sort: Meet Fluffy Ruffles, heroine of a weekly syndicated feature of the New York Herald. An heiress who has lost her fortune and keeps trying out new jobs to make a living, she first appeared in 1906. By 1908, she'd had musical written about her—with music by Jerome Kern, no less.

There were other commercial Fluffy Ruffles tie-ins, too, such as paper dolls. These interest me because Mattie works for a publishing firm and I’m exploring how children’s books were marketed. If anyone has a lead on turn-of-the-century giveaways and marketing schemes, please let me know in the comments.

For digitized Fluffy Ruffles cartoons and doggerel tales, click here.
For an informative blog post on Fluffy Ruffles from Secondat, click here.

For George Hamilton Green’s 1919 xylophone Fluffy Ruffles rag with a pictorial montage, click here. For more information about the recording, click here.

For Fluffy Ruffles paper dolls, click here.

There was even a very alcoholic, Prohibition-era drink, the Fluffy Ruffles.
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