FRANCE 1761–1802
On Marie’s early life in France
Madame Tussaud’s Memoirs and Reminiscences of France, Forming an Abridged History of the French Revolution, ed. Francis Hervé (Saunders & Otley, 1838)
On the sights, smells, fads, fashions and feel of the Paris Marie knew
Louis-Sébastien Mercier, Tableau de Paris (12 vols., Amsterdam, 1782–8)–an invaluable resource: vivid and vibrant, it was described by a contemporary as having been ‘composed on the street and written on a doorstep’; selections have been published in English as
——The Panorama of Paris, trans. Helen Simpson, with a new preface and translation of additional articles by Jeremy Popkin (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999)——The Picture of Paris before and after the Revolution, trans. Wilfrid and Emilie Jackson (Routledge, 1929)
——The Waiting City: Paris 1782–1788, trans. Helen Simpson (Harrap, 1933)
On domestic life, lighting, food, water supply
Annik Pardaihlé-Galabrun, The Birth of Intimacy: Privacy and Domestic Life in Early Modern Paris (Polity Press, 1991)
On shopping, fashion and trends
Christopher Todd, ‘French Advertising in the Eighteenth Century’, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 266 (1989), 513–47
Robert Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (Basic Books, 1984)–excellent on responses to Rousseau
Carolyn Sargentson, Merchants and Luxury Markets: The Marchands Merciers of Eighteenth-Century Paris (Victoria & Albert Museum, 1996)
Anny Latour, Kings of Fashion, trans. Mervyn Savill (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1958)
Leo Braudy, The Frenzy of Renown (Oxford University Press, 1986)–this classic text on the history of fame was an important resource for the changing marketplace of fame
Rebecca Sprang, The Invention of the Restaurant (Harvard University Press, 2000)
On celebrity hairdresser Léonard, and celebrity milliner/stylist Rose Bertin
Emile Langlade, Rose Bertin the Creator of Fashion at the Court of Marie-Antoinette, trans. Angelo S. Rappoport (Long, 1913)
Madge Garland, ‘Rose Bertin Minister of Fashion’, Apollo 87, January 1968, 40-44
Jean Léonard Autié, Recollections of Léonard, Hairdresser to Queen Marie-Antoinette, trans. E. Jules Meras (Greening & Co., 1912)
On having fun–fairs and popular entertainment
R. Laffont (ed.), Paris and its People: An Illustrated History (Methuen, 1958)
Robert Isherwood, ‘Entertainment in Eighteenth Century Paris Fairs’, Journal of Modern History 53 (March 1981), 24-48
——Farce and Fantasy: Popular Entertainment in Eighteenth-Century Paris Oxford University Press, 1991)–this and the following title are scholarly and accessible classics, invaluable for putting Curtius in context
Michèle Root-Bernstein, Boulevard Theater and Revolution in Eighteenth Century Paris (UMI Research Press, 1984)
John Lough, Paris Theatre Audiences in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries Oxford University Press, 1957)
On life at the palace of Versailles
Cecilia Hill, Versailles Life and History (Methuen, 1925)
Jacques Levron, Daily Life at Versailles in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, trans. Claire Elaine Engel (Allen & Unwin, 1968)
Norbert Elias, The Court Society, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Blackwell, 1983)
–a classic study of court protocol and the private being performed in public
Antonia Fraser, Marie Antoinette: The Journey (Phoenix, 2000)
Margaret Trouncer, Madame Elisabeth: Days at Versailles and in Prison with Marie Antoinette and her Family (Hutchinson, 1955)
Memoirs, eyewitnesses, first-hand flavour
Madame Campan, Memoirs of the Private Life of Marie Antoinette Queen of France and Navarre (2 vols., 3rd edn, Colburn, 1823)
Madame de La Tour du Pin, Escape From the Terror: The Journal of Madame de La Tour du Pin (Folio Society, 1979)
John Lough (ed.), France on the Eve of the Revolution: British Travellers’ Observations 1763–1788 (Croom Helm, 1987)
Arthur Young, Travels in France and Italy During the Years 1787, 1788, 1789 (Bell, 1900)
Hester Lynch Thrale, The French Journals of Mrs Thrale and Dr Johnson, ed. Moses Tyson and Henry Guppy (Manchester University Press, 1932)
Letters of Jefferson 1787 (Hale & Co., New York, n.d.)
Anne Carey (ed.), Diary and Letters of Gouverneur Morris (Morris, 1889)
Nikolai Karamzin, Letters of a Russian Traveler 1789–90, trans. Florence Jonas Columbia University Press, 1957)
On the Palais-Royal
Mark Girouard, ‘Rout to Revolution’, Country Life 179i, 30 January 1986
J. Adhémar, ‘Les musées de cire en France, Curtius, le banquet royal, les têtes coupées’, Gazette des Beaux-Arts 92 (1978), 203–214
Evelyn Farr, Before the Deluge: Parisian Society in the Reign of Louis XVI (Peter Owen, 1994)
Darrin McMahon, ‘The Birthplace of the Revolution: Public Space and Political Community in the Palais-Royal of Louis-Philippe-Joseph d’Orléans’, French History 10 (1996)
On the broader social background and changing social climate
Daniel Roche, The People of Paris: An Essay in Popular Culture in the Eighteenth Century (University of California Press, 1987)
David Garrioch, The Making of Revolutionary Paris (University of California Press, 2002)
Tim Blanning, The Culture of Power and the Power of Culture: Old Regime Europe 1660–1789 (Oxford University Press, 2002)
George Rudé, The Crowd in the French Revolution (Oxford University Press, 1959)
Simon Schama, Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution (Viking, 1989) Colin Jones, The Great Nation: France from Louis XV to Napoleon, 1715–1799 Allen Lane, 2002)
William Doyle, Origins of the French Revolution (Oxford University Press, 1963)
——The Oxford History of the French Revolution (Oxford University Press, 1989)
On the outbreak of the Revolution
David McCallum, ‘Waxing Revolutionary: Reflections on a Raid on a Waxworks at the Outbreak of the French Revolution’, French History 16 (2002)
Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution: A History, ed. J. Holland Rose (Bell, 1913)
Jacques Godechot, The Taking of the Bastille, trans. Jean Stewart (Faber, 1970)
On the progress of the Revolution, 1789–1794
Mona Ozouf, Festivals and the French Revolution, trans. Alan Sheridan (Harvard University Press, 1988)
David Lloyd Dowd, Pageant-Master of the Republic: Jacques-Louis David and the French Revolution (University of Nebraska Press, 1948)
Anita Brookner, Jacques-Louis David (Chatto & Windus, 1980)
Thomas E. Crow, Painters and Public Life in Eighteenth Century Paris (Yale University Press, 1985)
Helen Hinman, ‘Jacques Louis David et Madame Tussaud’, Gazette des Beaux-Arts 66 (1965), 331-338
Tessa Murdoch, ‘Madame Tussaud and the French Revolution’, Apollo 130i, July–September 1989
Simon Lee, ‘Artists and the Guillotine’, Apollo 130i, July–September 1989
David Bindman, The Shadow of the Guillotine: Britain and the French Revolution British Museum Publications, 1989)
Aileen Ribeiro, Fashion in the French Revolution (Batsford, 1988)
Gwyn Williams, Artisans and Sans-Culottes: Popular movements in France and Britain during the French Revolution (Libris, 1989)
Albert Soboul, The Parisian Sans-Culotte and the French Revolution, 1793–4, trans. Gwynne Lewis (Clarendon Press, 1964)
George Pernoud and Sabine Flaissier, The French Revolution, trans. Richard Graves (Secker & Warburg, 1960)
Jean Robiquet, Daily Life in the French Revolution (1938), trans. James Kirkup (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1964)
Linda Kelly, Women of the French Revolution (Hamish Hamilton, 1987)
Frédéric Loliée, Prince Talleyrand and his Times, trans. Bryan O’Donnell (John Long, 1911)
On the Terror
Daniel Arasse, The Guillotine and the Terror, trans. Christopher Miller (Lane, 1989)
Philip Gwyer and Peter McPhee (eds.), The French Revolution and Napoleon: A Sourcebook (Routledge, 2002)
David Jordan, The King’s Trial: The French Revolution vs Louis XVI (University of California Press, 2004)
Olivier Blanc, Last Letters: Prisons and Prisoners of the French Revolution (André Deutsch, 1987)
Eyewitnesses
Gouverneur Morris, A Diary of the French Revolution, ed. Beatrix Carey Davenport (Harrap, 1939)
The Reign of Terror: A Collection of Authentic Narratives of the Horrors Committed by the Revolutionary Government of France under Marat and Robespierre (Leonard Smithers, 1899)
Grace Elliott, Journal of My Life during the Revolution (Rodale Press, 1859)
Peter Vansittart (ed.), Voices of the French Revolution (Collins, 1989)
Colin Jones (ed.), Voices of the Revolution (Salem House, 1988)
Aftermath
Jean Robiquet, Daily Life in France under Napoleon, trans. Violet Macdonald (Allen & Unwin, 1962)
Martin Lyons, Napoleon Bonaparte and the Legacy of the French Revolution (Macmillan, 1994)
ENGLAND 1802–1850
On waxworks
E. J. Pyke, A Biographical Dictionary of Wax Modellers (Oxford University Press, 1975)
On interest in Napoleon
Alexandra Franklin and Mark Philp, Napoleon and the Invasion of Britain Bodleian Library, 2003)
Stuart Semmel, Napoleon and the British (Yale University Press, 2004)
On fairs and popular entertainment
Thomas Frost, The Old Showman and the Old London Fairs (Chatto & Windus, 1881)
Cornelius Walford, Fairs, Past and Present (Elliot Stock, 1883)
David Kerr Cameron, The English Fair (Sutton, 1998)
Mervyn Heard, ‘Paul de Philipstal and the Phantasmagoria in England, Scotland and Ireland’, part one, New Magic Lantern Journal 8 (1996) October: part two 8 (1997) October–two outstanding articles by a magic lantern maestro
Duncan Dallas, The Travelling People (Macmillan, 1971)
M. Willson Disher, The Greatest Show on Earth as Performed for over a Century at Astley’s…Royal Amphitheatre of Arts (Bell, 1937)
Hugh Honour, ‘The Colosseum’, Country Life, 113i, 2 January 1953
——‘Egyptian Hall’, Country Life, 115i, 7 January 1954
Aleck Abrahams, ‘Curiosities of the Egyptian Hall’, The Antiquary, 1907
Richard D. Altick, The Shows of London (my desert-island book–a magisterial and magical history of exhibitions in the capital) Belknap Press, 1978
Ricky Jay, Extraordinary Exhibitions…Broadsides from the Collection of Ricky Jay (Quantuck Lane Press, 2005)–ephemera-based enchantment
——Learned Pigs and Fire-Proof Women (Robert Hale, 1987)–completely charming
Herman Furst von Pückler-Muskau, A Regency Visitor: The English Tour 1826–1828 (Collins, 1957)
On London, 1835–1850
Charles Knight (ed.), London (Charles Knight & Co., 3 vols., 1841)–an excellent profile of the Victorian city emerging from Georgian London
The Shows of London (as above)
John Timbs, Curiosities of London: Exhibiting the Most Rare and Remarkable Objects of Interest in the Metropolis with nearly 60 Years of Recollections (London, 1855)
Thomas Shepherd, London Interiors: A Grand National Exhibition of the Religious, Regal and Civic Solemnities, Public Amusements, Scientific Meetings and Commercial Scenes of the British Capital 1841–1844 (Joseph Mead, 1841)
David Bartlett, What I Saw in London, or Man and Things in the Great Metropolis Derby & Miller, 1852)
P. T. Barnum, The Life of P.T. Barnum Written by Himself (Sampson Low, 1855)
Raymund Fitsimons, Barnum in London (Geoffrey Bles, 1969)
Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers (inc. Pickwick Advertiser), monthly, April 1836 to November 1837
——Nicholas Nickleby (inc. Nickleby Advertiser), monthly, April 1838 to October 1839
——The Old Curiosity Shop, Master Humphrey’s Clock, weekly, April 1840 to February 1841
——Oliver Twist, monthly, February 1837 to April 1839
——A Tale of Two Cities (Penguin, 2000)
——‘Our Eyewitness’ in ‘Great Company’ All the Year Round, 31 December 1859 and 7 January 1860
Michael Slater (ed.), Dickens’s Journalism, vol. 2: The Amusements of the People and Other Papers: Reports, Essays and Reviews 1834–51 (Dent, 1996)
Bernard Darwin, The Dickens Advertiser (Elkin Matthews & Marrot, 1930)
Paul Schlicke, Dickens and Popular Entertainment (Allen & Unwin, 1985)
On advertising
‘A Paper on Puffing’, Ainsworth’s Magazine, July 1842
‘The Advertising System’, 77, Edinburgh Review, February 1843
Charles Dickens, ‘Bill-Sticking’, Household Words, 2 March 1851
‘Advertisements’, Quarterly Review 98 (June–September 1855)
The Grand Force, Frasers Magazine, 79, March 1869
Henry Sampson, A History of Advertising (Chatto & Windus, 1874)
On change, and the Victorian world view
John Copeland, On Roads and their Traffic 1750–1850 (David & Charles, 1968)
Richard Altick, The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public 1800–1900 (Oxford University Press, 1957)
——The Presence of the Present: Topics of the Day in the Victorian Novel (Ohio State University Press, 1991)
H. Turner, A Collector’s Guide to Staffordshire Pottery Figurines (MacGibbon & Kee, 1971)
Thomas Balston, Staffordshire Portrait Figures of the Victorian Age (Faber, 1958)
Cyril Williams-Wood, Staffordshire Pot Lids and their Potters (Faber, 1972)
Louis James, Print and the People 1819–1851 (Allen Lane, 1976)
Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero Worship and the Heroic in History (James Fraser, 1841)
——Past and Present (Oxford University Press, 1843)
——Sartor Resartus, The Tailor Retailored (1833–4)
Helmut and Alison Gernsheim, L. J. M. Daguerre. The History of the Diorama and the Daguerreotype (Secker & Warburg, 1956)
On Madame Tussaud
Although I have taken a very different route, the following authors who made earlier journeys helped me to plot my course:
Leonard Cottrell, Madame Tussaud (Evans, 1951)
Anita Leslie and Pauline Chapman, Madame Tussaud: Waxworker Extraordinary Hutchinson, 1978)
Pauline Chapman, The French Revolution as Seen by Madame Tussaud, Witness Extraordinary (Quiller Press, 1989)
——Madame Tussaud in England (Quiller Press, 1992)
Teresa Ransom, Madame Tussaud (Sutton Publishing, 2003)
On Madame Tussaud’s
John Theodore Tussaud, The Romance of Madame Tussaud’s (Odhams Press, 1921)
Edward Gatacre and Laura Dru, ‘Portraiture in le cabinet de cire Curtius and its successor, Madame Tussaud’s Exhibition’, conference paper (‘atti del I congresso internazionale sulla ceroplastica nella scienza e nell’arte’, Florence, 1975)
Pamela Pilbeam, Madame Tussaud and the History of the Waxworks (Hambledon amp; London, 2003)–an excellent academic but accessible study spanning the origins of exhibition to the present day
Sources for the Epilogue
Peter Bailey, ‘ “A Mingled Mass of Perfectly Legitimate Pleasures”: The Victorian Middle Class and the Problem of Leisure’, Victorian Studies 21, 4 (summer 1978) 7-28
The Economist, 31 May 1851
——26 October 1850
——28 October 1851
Fraser’s Magazine, January 1852
Illustrated London News, May, June, July 1851
Punch, 13 April 1850 and 1 February 1851
Other sources
Ephemera, catalogues, posters, advertisements, newspapers and periodicals in the Guildhall Library, the London Library, the British Library, the British Library Newspapers Collection at Colindale, the Theatre Museum, The Dickens Museum, the John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera, the Bodleian Library, and Madame Tussauds Archives in Acton and Marylebone