Michael Howell

Peter Ford

Through physical deformities which were almost impossible to describe, Joseph Merrick spent much of his life exhibited as a fairground freak until even 19th century sensibilities could take no more. This is the story of a tragic individual and his survival against the odds in Victorian England.

The True History of the Elephant Man

Sunyi Dean

Well-written and well structured as a book. Far kinder than the only other book I've read on Joseph Merrick (which, I think, was from the point of view of the doctor, and rather distasteful if memory serves.) 

 I am, as ever with these sorts of stories, torn between morbid fascination and my own sense of unease at having that kind of fascination at all. One cannot quite escape the feeling that we are still keeping poor Merrick trapped in a perpetual freakshow, but one that is literary rather than physical.

And maybe that's part of its point.

The True History of the Elephant Man

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