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    The Wreck of the Medusa
    The Wreck of the Medusa
    The Wreck of the Medusa
    Ebook420 pages5 hours

    The Wreck of the Medusa

    By Jonathan Miles

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    A “thrilling . . . captivating” account of the most famous shipwreck before the Titanic—a tragedy that inspired an unforgettable masterpiece of Western art (The Boston Globe).
     
    In June 1816, the Medusa set sail. Commanded by an incompetent captain, the frigate ran aground off the desolate West African coast. During the chaotic evacuation a privileged few claimed the lifeboats, while 147 men and one woman were herded aboard a makeshift raft that was soon cut loose by the boats that had pledged to tow it to safety.
     
    Those on the boats made it ashore and undertook a two-hundred-mile trek through the sweltering Sahara, but conditions were far worse on the drifting raft. Crazed, parched, and starving, the diminishing band fell into mayhem. When rescue arrived thirteen days later, only fifteen were alive.
     
    Among the handful of survivors were two men whose bestselling account of the maritime disaster scandalized Europe and inspired promising artist Théodore Géricault, who threw himself into a study of the Medusa tragedy, turning it into a vast canvas in his painting, The Raft of the Medusa.
     
    Drawing on contemporaneously published accounts and journals of survivors, The Wreck of the Medusa is “a captivating gem about art’s relation to history” (Booklist) and ultimately “a thrilling read” (The Guardian).
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateOct 16, 2008
    ISBN9781555848675
    The Wreck of the Medusa
    Author

    Jonathan Miles

    After a nomadic childhood in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, Jonathan Miles has been travelling ever since and currently lives in Paris. He studied at University College, London and received his doctorate from Jesus College, Oxford. He is the author of several books, including Medusa: The Shipwreck, the Scandal and the Masterpiece, Nine Lives of Otto Katz and St Petersburg: Three Centuries of Murderous Desire, which were all published to international acclaim.

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    Reviews for The Wreck of the Medusa

    3.5/5

    28 ratings2 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Anyone who has studied art history is probably already familiar with Gericault's famous painting of the Medusa. I was first introduced to the painting in high school and while I remembered that it was inspired by a true and politically important incident, I didn't really know much beyond that. This book explains the event in great detail, but in a way that is very readable and not at all tedious. It also provides an overview of Gericault's life, his experience of creating the painting and public reactions to it. So really, you get a lot out of this book: naval history, 19th century French political history, art history and it has enough depictions of humanity at its worst that one might even classify it as having "true crime" elements. Highly recommended.
    • 2/5
      This was not just one book. This is several books. Most of them are about post revolutionary France or a bio of an artist. The book about the wreck is only about the first five chapters.

    Book preview

    The Wreck of the Medusa - Jonathan Miles

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