Kate Berridge, Madame Tussaud: A Life in Wax

Madame Tussaud: A Life in Wax

Kate Berridge

Morrow, July 2006, $25.95

ISBN: 0060528478

Though the focus is on the woman who brought wax figures of blood and gore to the forefront in the late eighteenth century, this terrific biography also showcases the era. The concentration on Madam Tussaud's life also contains an interesting underlying theme that seems apropos today, and perhaps can be generalized as a human condition that the macabre of "if it bleeds, it leads", especially if a celebrity is involved. This has always fascinated mankind. Born in 1761 to a teenage cook, Madame Tussaud using chutzpah that PT Barnum later adopted, learned her trade from a traveling showman before turning to the French Reign of Terror to recreate wax scenes of the guillotining of King Louis XVI and Robespierre. She was a businesswoman first and foremost, but was also a wonderful artist and a terrific reader of the human condition as her work, which moved from Paris to London become part of the pop culture of the first half of the ninetieth century, and remains a fixture today (movies like Waxworks). Biography readers will enjoy this fascinating look at a competent female whose life in wax still fascinates people over a hundred and fifty years after her death as her "name" Madame Tussaud brings up interesting gruesome images.