Madame Tussaud

Paris, 1788. Marie is a young woman in love with her oldest friend and neighbour, Henri. But she is also a determined businesswoman, eager to see her family's waxwork museum keep them safe and solvent. Her gift for modelling faces in wax brings her to Versailles, where she must teach the king's sister her skill. But the coming revolution will place Marie, her family and all of Paris in grave danger. As the monarchy is overthrown and the guillotine becomes a fixture in French life, Marie is expected to show her patriotism by making death masks from the severed heads of every key figure killed as the Reign of Terror begins and France enters its darkest time. How will Marie survive the Revolution? Who will survive it with her? And just how will this girl come to be known as the woman behind one of the most famous museums in the world?

In 1789, with the starving French people on the brink of revolution, orphaned Celie Rosseau, an amazing artist and a very clever thief, runs wild with her protector, Algernon, trying to join the idealistic freedom fighters of Paris. But when she is caught stealing from none other than the king's brother and the lady from the waxworks, Celie must use her drawing talent to buy her own freedom or die for her crimes. Forced to work for Madame Tussaud inside the opulent walls that surround Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, Celie is shocked to find that the very people she imagined to be monsters actually treat her with kindness. But the thunder of revolution still rolls outside the gates, and Celie is torn between the cause of the poor and the safety of the rich. When the moment of truth arrives, will she turn on Madame Tussaud or betray the boy she loves? From the hidden garrets of the starving poor to the jeweled halls of Versailles, Madame Tussaud's Apprentice is a sweeping story of danger, intrigue, and young love, set against one of the most dramatic moments in history.

A “meticulously researched and deftly written biography” of the woman behind the famed wax museums, and their origins in the era of the French Revolution (Midwest Book Review). Madame Marie Tussaud is known worldwide for the chain of wax museums she started over two hundred years ago. Less known is that her original wax models were often of the famous and infamous people she personally knew during and after the French Revolution. These were people like Voltaire, Robespierre, and Napoleon—people who changed the world. Even more, the wax figures were depicted in scenes drawn from the horrors she experienced during the reign of terror in Paris during her early adult years. This book shows how the traumatic and cataclysmic experiences of Madame Tussaud’s early life became part of her legacy. She created a succession of scenes in wax, telling events as she personally experienced them. Her wax sculptures were visceral. She made them herself, at times from the living person’s head and at other times from the recently guillotined head of a former houseguest. As a result, people were drawn to her wax displays because they were the most intense way of experiencing those events themselves. This is the story not only of a unique artist, but of how one of history’s bloodiest events influenced her life and work.

Tussaud's catered for the public's fascination with monarchy, whether Henry VIII and his wives or Queen Victoria, as well as for their love of history, acting as an accessible and enjoyable museum. This work looks at Madame Tussaud herself and her exhibition as part of the wider history of wax modelling and of popular entertainment.

Export edition (World excluding US and Canada). From little beginnings: the extraordinary story of a singular, diminutive crumb of a servant girl turned entertainment mogul.

Paris, 1793. Marie Crossholz manages the wax museum set up by her father. In exchange for bribes, some executioners allow her to mould the faces of guillotined aristocrats... After the French Revolution, Marie Crossholz becomes Mrs Tussaud. Disappointed by the marriage, she leaves for London with the ambition to create a wax museum there. New fights and other tumultuous adventures await her... Thirty years later, in 1835, she inaugurates the famous Tussaud Museum of Baker Street in London, which today continues to grow with new celebrities and attracts millions of visitors!