Madame Marie Tussaud is known worldwide for the chain of wax museums she started over 200 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. As portrayed in this Madame Tussaud book, 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 Madame Tussaud book delves into the French Revolution to help you understand the experiences and background of this fascinating woman. It demonstrates how she became an integral part of the revolution and how she followed the orders of the National Convention to record history by making death masks of some of the most famous and infamous people sent to the guillotine.  

The history behind the wax figures that filled Madame Tussaud’s exhibition halls was partly what drew crowds, and her astute insight into how to present the compelling scenes drew increasingly large crowds. From this beginning, she created a museum of wax figures that has remained a vibrant, ongoing attraction for well over 200 years.

This Madame Tussaud book recounts the traumatic and cataclysmic experiences of her early life and shows how they became part of her legacy. It offers insights into the relationships she had with such people as the famous Enlightenment writer Voltaire, the French King’s sister Madame Élisabeth, the influential French revolutionary figure Maximilien Robespierre, and the famous military strategist and Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, as well as England’s beloved Queen Victoria.  From these experiences, 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 house guest. As a result, visitors were drawn to her wax displays in those days because they were the most intense way of experiencing those events themselves.

Madame Tussaud’s story is told through a series of unique and informative stories drawn from an in-depth study of both Madame Tussaud’s life and the dramatic times in which she lived. This narrative style makes learning about history rewarding for both avid history readers and people with a casual interest in this unique story.

Madame Tussaud was also not just a wax sculptor. She was an amazing marketer who developed ideas that took her wax exhibitions from the ordinary to the extraordinary. Read how she did it and learn how she created this phenomenon of wax figures that still survives today.