Madame Tussaud: A Life and a Time - Hardcover

Ransom, Teresa

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0750927658 ISBN 13: 9780750927659

Publisher: Sutton Pub Ltd, 2003

Synopsis

The story of a woman whose work inspired one of London's greatest attractions. Born in Strasbourg, the young Marie Tussaud learned her skills from her mother's employer, Philippe Curtius. In 1780 she became tutor to King Louis XVI's sister and for eight years prior to the Revolution lived at the court in Versailles. In Paris throughout the Revolution, she was often in extreme danger. Incredibly, she was forced to make death masks from the decapitated heads of her friends who fell to the guillotine. In 1802, she opened her first exhibition at the Lyceum theatre in London. With modelled figures such as Napoleon and Josephine and other notables from the Revolution, her exhibition was very popular. She also had the guillotine blade that severed Marie Antoinette's head. For the next 26 years Madame Tussaud toured England and Scotland with her Waxwork Exhibition, until she established her base in Baker Street in 1835. She had always had a "separate room", for the most gruesome of the models, which in 1846 Punch dubbed "The Chamber of Horrors". The name stuck. She died in 1850 and in 1884, Tussaud's grandsons moved the exhibition to Marylebone Road, where it remains.

About this title

About the Author:

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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Sutton Pub Ltd
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0750927658
• ISBN 13: 9780750927659
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256