Overview

The gruesome story behind the name that everyone knows, and whose work inspired one of London's greatest attractions. Madame Tussaud opened her first exhibition at the Lyceum theatre in London in 1802 and for the next 26 years toured England and Scotland with her Waxwork Exhibition.

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9780750927659

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In revolutionary Paris, the crowds around the guillotine would applaud as another noble head fell into the basket. For Marie Tussaud it was a sad time, as many of these victims had been her friends. But business was business after all - so she made wax death masks of the nobility and took them on tour. It may sound mercenary now but civility wasn't much in evidence during the French Revolution, and Madame Tussaud knew better than anyone that she was lucky to escape with her own head. After all, she had been a favourite at the royal court and thrown into a dungeon because of it. The tale of how Marie graduated from provincial anonymity to royal favouritism, then fell into disgrace before reinventing herself as a travelling show-woman in England and Scotland, takes in some of the most turbulent events of European history. Teresa Ransom - biographer of Fanny Trollope and Marie Corelli - paints vivid word pictures of this diminutive figure and places her life in its wider social context. We learn of Paris's filthy slums both before and after the revolution, the simmering rage that infected an entire nation, and the little-known human side of Marie Antoinette and her husband Louis XVI. Extracts from Tussaud's somewhat-muddled memoirs appear alongside the more focused writings of her contemporaries. What emerges is the story of a determined woman who looked as harmless as a sparrow but possessed the shrewdness to manipulate those who thought themselves her intellectual superiors. Tussaud is known today for her waxworks, a trade she learned as a girl and which she taught to Louis XVI's youngest sister. She realized early on that through her wax figures she could introduce historical personalities to the general public - who would pay well for the privilege. What she never realized was that she was writing herself into the history books as well. (Kirkus UK)

Author Information

Teresa Ransom trained and worked as an occupational therapist, then an actress and teacher of the Alexander technique. She is the author of two previous biographies, Fanny Trollope and The Mysterious Miss Marie Corelli. Both biographies have been recorded as audio books. Plans are almost finalised for Fanny trollope's life to be made into a feature film in UK in 2001. She lives in Cambridge.

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