The True History of the Elephant Man, by Michael Howell & Peter Ford

Joseph Carey Merrick, born in England on August 5, 1862, is better known as The Elephant Man.

Through horrible physical deformities which were almost impossible to describe, he spent much of his life exhibited as a fairground freak until even nineteenth-century sensibilities could take no more.

Hounded, persecuted and starving, he ended up at London's Liverpool Street Station where he was rescued, housed and fed by the distinguished surgeon Frederick Treves.

To Treves surprise, he discovered during the course of their friendship that lurking beneath the mass of Merrick's corrupting flesh lived a spirit that was as courageous as it had been tortured, and a nature as gentle and dignified as it had been deprived and tormented.  

The True History of the Elephant Man presents Merrick’s extraordinary and moving story, set among the brutal realities of the Victorian world, telling of a tragic individual and his survival against overwhelming odds.

“A story to strike pity and terror into any heart.” - Times Literary Supplement