The Wonders

A promising young historian with a taste for the exotic.' Stephen Fry

A radical new history of the Victorian age: meet the forgotten and extraordinary freak performers whose talents and disabilities helped define an era.

On 23 March, 1844, General Tom Thumb, at 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 – the age of the freak was born.

Bewitching all levels of society, it was a world of astonishing spectacle – of dwarfs, giants, bearded ladies, Siamese twins and swaggering showmen – and one that has since inspired countless novels, films and musicals. 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...