I have been fascinated by Madame Tussaud for years and was very excited to receive an ARC of this book.  While it was informative and interesting, I felt that the book was more about the history of the French Revolution than a biography of Madame Tussaud.

I tought this book was really well reaserched. I had sometimes a bit of trouble reading it but I got to learn about a very important person that not many people know about ...but that we all know by name, and have seen the work that is now still present in our world. it was fascinating

Well written in depth look at Madame Tussaud’s life and history of the time she lived in .Well researched brings her alive very interesting.#netgalley#pen&sword

Now call me naïve if you will, but if I see a book entitled “Madame Tussaud: Her Life and Legacy” and if there is a picture of said Madame Tussaud on the cover, then I kind of expect the book to be about….Madame Tussaud. Naturally I expect the French Revolution, of which she was an eye witness, to be mentioned, and I certainly expect some of the key players in said Revolution to be mentioned, but I do not expect pretty much the whole book to be about the French Revolution. If I want to read a history of the French Revolution I will most probably choose a book called “The French Revolution”. Are my expectations here unreasonable? My thanks go to two fellow reviewers who have done the sums for me. Apparently the split between Madame T and the Revolution is about 15%/85%, or about 30 pages out of 200. But I learnt a lot about Madam Tussaud in spite of this imbalance, I hear you ask? Well, no, I learnt very little and most of that was speculation, supposition, almost certainly, maybe and perhaps. Admittedly there’s not much to go on as her own memoir is notably reticent, but I’m sure there is more information available than is offered here. And a good biography can’t just make things up. “There are several harrowing stories about Madame Tussaud’s life on the road. The first involves Madame T surviving a shipwreck in 1821. The ship that seems to fit best with the timeframe and story is a ship where neither Madam T or her sons appear on the passenger list.” So……did she survive a shipwreck? And so many extraneous digressions. Mention of the guillotine? Pages and pages about its use and history. In 1838 Madame T models Queen Victoria – pages about the wedding procession. Chamber of Horrors? Long digression on Burke and Hare. But about Madame T – pretty much nothing. The book is not even very well written, with much repetition and a confused chronology. I found it frustrating and tedious and I am very little wiser about the book’s alleged subject. Disappointing.

Picture a talented young woman being forced to sit on a chair with the decapitated head of, oh, say one of her best friends or more enjoyable dining guests from last week in her lap, making a mold of the face so as to be able to render it in wax. Now put a maddened crowd in front of this girl, a crowd that insists on watching, and you get an idea of what kind of pressures Marie Tussaud had to endure and truly, what shaped her in becoming the world's most famous wax sculptor. Geri Walton uncannily knows how to give the reader a fantastic ride. Walton's stupendous research into (you name it) all people and trends that impacted Marie Tussaud's life, which would include the absolutely tumultuous French Revolution, and her ability to render each person or event in a way that will most interest the reader means she (Walton) understands human nature. This is no dry history book. This is the kind of biography that will have the reader sharing intellectual tidbits at barbecues. I, who have taken more than one class on the French Revolution when obtaining my French degrees, was more absorbed by this book than anything I remember reading on the same subject in college. No disrespect is meant to the writer when I say that I had to drop the book in pure terror when reading about The Terror that overtook France. We talk a lot about what the Nazis did during WWII, but The Terror was an example of what people can do to their own population. My hair stood on end. I appreciated the astute assessment of marketing propaganda employed by Curtius, Marie's father, who taught his daughter all he knew. Marie learned, herself, to be a good promoter, which does not mean she was truthful. However, her skill was astounding. I spent hours looking up the figures I was reading about and I can easily see Wellington visiting Tussaud's wax figures to stare at Napoleon for days and days, to contemplate his enemy. I admired Marie Tussaud's survival instinct, her ability to cut her failure of a husband off, and her careful management of resources. What a book! Fantastic.https://wordpress.com/post/grassrootswritersguild.wordpress.com/5795

I have been intrigued by Madame Tussaud for quite a while after I read a fictional account of her life and she has been one of the people that I always want to read more about.

She is a fascinating lady lived through one of the most disruptive times in French history, the French Revolution and she was right in the middle of it at times, and that must have been a stressful and worrying time for her.

This title is a little bit misleading as it is more an account of what she lived through, as opposed to her life itself but it is still a well written, and well researched book that I thoroughly enjoyed.

It is 4 stars from me for this one, highly recommended and a good introduction too to the French Revolution and a book that could be used to spark further interest.

Wow, this one was considerably more in-depth than I had expected! Well-researched but it isn't strictly a book focusing on Madame Tussaud (more on the Revolution).

I was a fan of Madame Tussaud before I read the book. Walton places Tussaud firmly in her time. This book isn't just for fans. Madame Tussaud gives us a personal history woven into a part of world history.

Filled with fascinating detail, Geri Walton’s book about Madame Tussaud is more about Madame Tussaud’s contemporaries than it is about Madame Tussaud herself. Walton’s book is abundantly footnoted and enhanced with photographs. The book bears authenticity, credibility, and possesses one of the hallmarks of a good non-fiction read—it leaves the reader wanting to learn more about the topic. By the same token, the book needs more of what makes it an interesting study of Madame Tussaud. It needs more information about the social mores and contextual laws surrounding Madame Tussaud’s split from her husband, her ability to own property, and about how a woman ran a business at the end of the 18th century. It also needs more discussion about her sons and her family relationships. Most importantly, it needs more information about Madame Tussaud.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for an ARC in exchange for this honest review. I encourage the author to delve into the subject of who Madame Tussaud really was and look forward to reading more from this author.

Thank you to Netgalley for a copy of this book in exchange for a fair review.

I sadly disappointment with this book, even though contain details about about Madame Tussaud like I found many other readers it was more about the French Revolution. I was expecting a book about her personal life and how Tussauds come to be but instead got a book about French politicians. The it's self is extremely well written but it is not a book I will be reading again.

Cover and title and cover our excellent but sadly it does not live up to expectations.

But this just my opinion and some one else might enjoy reading.

An enjoyable look into the life and times of Madamme Tussaud, whom we all know and love for making wax death masks.

We all have heard of the attraction in Lonodn and all over the world and they are world reknown for being so life like, I myslef have been on several occasions and really amaze at the detail in which they are made.

I recommend this ofr anyone who is interested in this lady.

There are many books about her, and if you have read any of them, i saw, give this one a read too.

I have to agree with other reviewers that this could have been amazing had it focused on Marie’s life. Instead this is a book about the French Revolution. It is well researched and contains a lot of information but isn’t a book on ‘Madame Tussaud.’
I was given an ARC by NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

I love historical biographies and really enjoyed this one. Great details and insight how Mme. Tussaud got her start. She had a long and sometimes dangerous life in France, finally settling in England. Her workmanship earned her respect and a certain amount of wealth. The book is entertaining and I liked the pictures at the end. For those who gave ever gone to see wax figures, this book explains the process behind the lifelike figures and why the public is still fascinated by them. I give this book two thumbs up!

Das Buch kommt mit vielen interessanten Details daher und schlaut auf über eine Frau, deren Name jeder kennt, aber nicht deren Geschichte.
Es ist aber auch so historikerlike verfasst, daß es teilweise viel zu trocken rüberkommt.

Have to agree with other reviewers, this book could have an amazing story, but Marie is overshadowed by all the other people that the author keeps throwing in. If there weren't enough records or papers dealing with her, then the book should have either been much shorter or written from a different perspective.

The editing of this book was also not very strong. There were many repetitive passages and wayward words. A stronger editor would have seen the issues with the book and made it a much stronger piece.


I received a copy of this book in exchange for a review, but all opinions are my own.

It's a huge disappointment. This book is not about Madame Tussaud, but a tale about the French Revolution. Marie is like a supporting actor, she is in the city, making wax statues from decapitated people's heads, but that's it. I was interested in the statues, her personal life and how the show went, but instead the book is a long biography about French politicians. Pages and chapters are gone without even mentioning Madame Tussaud. It's just not about what the title and the cover promises.

This biography was well researched and contained a lot of information that I hadn’t previously read in other books. The author’s attention to detail is evident in the writing. Highly recommend!

*Many thanks to Geri Walton, Pen & Sword and Netgalley for provoding me with arc in exchange for my honest review.*
An interesting book about the woman whose surname sounds familiar to millions of people but whose life is unknown to most of us. The Author does a very good job putting Madame Tussaud against the historic background as she survived the French Revolution, and met most of its key players. Her life in England is well portrayed, including both her wax work and personal problems. At the beginning I thought there was too much history and not enough of her life, however, then I thought that the Author made the right decision to give us the insight into the history of France and Great Britain due to the fact that Madame Tussaud's involvement in wax works was directly linked to the events of her times, especially at the beginning of her career. I found the history of this rather specific craft of creating wax heads and figures truly informative as I had never read anything on this subject before.

I have been to London only twice so far, but both times I visited Madame Tussauds and was absolutely thrilled by the life-like figures. I also went to the branch here in Vienna a couple of years ago. And would visit any Mme Tussauds again, despite the costly entrance fee. Because after having visited some other wax museums in the US I can attest that the quality of the figures at Madame Tussauds is truly extraordinary and true-to-life.

Excited to learn something about her life I picked up this book - but got utterly disappointed. The things we really learn about Marie Grosholtz are nothing more than one can read on her Wiki page. Two thirds of the book are set in France and focus on the years of the revolution and the following reign of terror. The author spends a lot of time and pages to recall the biographies of some important and of even more not so important people of that time and describes various incidents they were involved in. Marie is mentioned only in passing, when she takes the death masks of famous people like Voltaire, Robesspiere and the beheaded king and queen of France.

To some extend all those historical facts were even interesting to me (I was constantly googling names and events that were mentioned), but 1. I expected a biography on Madame Tussaud and not a book on the French Revolution and 2. it got boring after I was about a third into the book (the book has only 200 pages, but it felt like 500!). All the time new people are introduced into the "story" (and they become less and less important the further we get), and to explain their background the author goes back in time, sometimes repeating events she previously discussed already, and then comes at one point back to the time we were at pages before - only I as a reader didn't always know which time exactly we are at now. Confusing! Also, the whole story was rather an enumeration of (political) events. I would have been far more interested in how the normal people lived there and then, how their daily lives have been, what really brought on their anger with the aristocracy. But no mention of that anywhere in the book, not even of the daily life of Marie. Probably because the author has no information on that part of her either. Tussaud wrote her own memoirs in 1838, but even there she only mentions historical facts and figures and does not share any personal things with the reader (at least that is what the author of this book, Geri Walton, tells us).

In 1802 Madame Tussaud goes to England, so we finally leave the French and their history behind. But unfortunately we don't learn much about Madame Tussaud now either. General facts, like when she opened up her first museum in London, are woven in. But the rest of the pages are again devoted to the lives of the people she modelled - e.g. Queen Victoria or murderers that became part of her notorious "Chamber of Horrors".

So in the end I give 1 and three quarter stars in recognition of the work the gathering of all the historical facts must have been and a quarter of a star for the tiny bit of info on Madame Tussaud.

Ironically, Geri Walton writes about the publisher of Madame Tussauds own memoirs, who also apparently wrote a historical book on her and that time, the following: "Hervé was not a trained historian, he was fascinated by Madame Tussaud's tales. He meticulously recorded them and added events of interest related to the French Revolution, thereby creating what he claimed on the title page to be 'an abridged history of the French Revolution'. Yet, the Memoirs possessed little information about Madame Tussaud and appeared to be more of an attempt to craft a certain image of her for public consumption than to tell her life story." I take this criticism of her on Hervé and give it right back to her, word for word!

Madame Tussaud: Her Life & Legacy is part biography, part history lesson. It's information rich and well written making it easy to get through. At times it can be a tad dry but there is so much to learn that I simply couldn't stop reading. There is a lot of pages dedicated to European history which was designed to put her life into context, but there is far more about the French Revolution, the Napoleonic wars etc and prominent people such as Marie Antoinette and Louis XIV who were the subjects of Tussaud's waxworks than of herself.

It was all well researched and presented but it wasn't exactly what I was expecting in a book that is marketed as an intriguing biographical account of Tussaud herself. Just like iconic artists before her the enigmatic Tussaud was reclusive and as a result, not a lot was known about her. If you are looking for a memoir of this incredible figure then I suggest looking elsewhere as you will not find a lot of new information about her here, sadly. In my opinion, there is not enough focus on Madame Tussaud for this to be defined as biographical. Many thanks to Pen & Sword History for an ARC.