The Wonders

by John Woolf

Overview

On March 23, 1844, General Tom Thumb, just 25 inches tall, entered the Picture Gallery at Buckingham Palace and bowed low to Queen Victoria. On both sides of the Atlantic, this meeting marked a tipping point in the nineteenth century, and the age of the freak was born.Bewitching all levels of society, it was a world of curiosities and astonishing spectacle—of dwarfs, giants, bearded ladies, Siamese twins, and swaggering showmen. But the real stories—human dramas that so often eclipsed the fantasy presented on the stage—of the performing men, women and children, have been forgotten or marginalized in the histories of the very people who exploited them. In this richly evocative account, John Woolf uses a wealth of recently discovered material to bring to life the sometimes tragic, sometimes triumphant, always extraordinary stories of people who used their (dis)abilities and difference to become some of the first international celebrities. Through their lives we discover afresh some of the great transformations of the age: the birth of show business, of celebrity, of advertising, and of “alternative facts” while also exploring the tensions between the power of fame, the impact of exploitation, and our fascination with “otherness.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781643132921
Publisher:	Pegasus Books
Publication date:	11/05/2019
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
File size:	18 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Dr. John Woolf is a researcher, writer, and historian specializing in nineteenth­century cultural history. Having read history at the University of Cambridge, he went on to obtain a PhD on Victorian freak shows and currently works across TV, radio, and film. He has most recently cowritten the bestselling Audible book Stephen Fry's Victorian Secrets and has developed and featured in a number of BBC series and documentaries on freak performers and the Victorian period. In 2017, The Wonders was awarded the Biographers' Club Tony Lothian Prize for the best proposal for an uncommissioned first biography.

Editorial Reviews

08/26/2019

Historian Woolf’s lively debut asserts that the height of the West’s 19th-century study of disease and public health reforms was also the “heyday of the freak show.” The European aristocracy’s long-standing interest in people with rare conditions was, Woolf notes, a kind of live Cabinet of Curiosities, and the Victorian fixation on categorization fed into audiences’ mixed disgust and fascination over acts featuring “freaks.” He paints portraits of the bigger stars, including Siamese twins Chang and Eng; humbug master P.T. Barnum and his exploitation of Joice Heth, the supposedly 161-year-old former slave of George Washington; and the diminutive Charles Stratton (aka “General Tom Thumb”), who became the toast of European high society after being feted by Queen Victoria in 1844. Business took a tumble in the late 1800s and early 1900s with increased competition (sports, movies, vaudeville); and eventually, social Darwinists “turned freak performers into a national menace.” Woolf balances his colorful, detailed storytelling with sharp-eyed cultural unpacking, such as discussing how the traveling freak shows were exploitative and demeaning but also provided income and social networks for outsiders with limited employment opportunities. This rich, resonant cultural history takes a solid look at the oft-explosive intersections of commerce, wonder, ethnicity, and morality. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

The life stories of those paid to be gazed at and ridiculed have been deftly teased from the archives, providing a sympathetic account of these amazing individuals.

Sarah Wise

A wonderfully rich, compassionate and pungent potpourri of the extraordinary, the unusual and the rare. Turns our notions of Victorian prudery, propriety and voyeurism upside down. Brilliantly researched and written with great verve.

Neil McKenna

Explores with subtlety and consideration the many facets of humanity’s strangeness. An excellent book and an important study of the physically marginalized and neglected.

Clive Bloom

John Woolf's book will dazzle you with details of extraordinary lives, long underestimated by history.

Matthew Sweet

Fascinating and though-provoking. A marvelously researched account of an extraordinary side of Victorian life which has been ignored for too long.

Jane Ridley

A promising young historian with a taste for the exotic.

Stephen Fry

Woolf writes about this paradox with transparency, always quick to identify sources and the biases or fictionalizations they might contain. Curious but dignified history.

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