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Liberty Enlightening the World — The Talking Hologram Book · Bartholdi’s Own Account of the Statue, Told by Lady Liberty Herself

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Meet the Book

A stage plate from the book — the statue's making in Paris Lady Liberty, the narrator — her head photographed in the Champ-de-Mars, Paris, 1883

LIBERTY

Liberty introduces her book Her own voice for this preview — 36 seconds
Now hear the book itself — A Word from Victor Hugo — and the Sculptor The book’s own first chapter, from its first words — Hugo’s dying note to Bartholdi, then the sculptor’s own account begins · 90 seconds

It opens with a dying poet’s last written words. Victor Hugo sent them to the sculptor for this very book: “Form to the sculptor is all and yet nothing. It is nothing without the spirit; with the idea it is everything.” Then Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi himself takes up the story — how a dinner-table remark in France became the tallest statue in the world.

Press Next to step into the middle of the book — where France hands her over, and she crosses the ocean in crates.

SOURCE — in the open. The words are Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi’s own: The Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World (1885), written by the sculptor and published for the benefit of the pedestal fund — public domain in the United States, reproduced complete and unaltered — together with the American Committee’s official inauguration volume (1887), also public domain. Only the “By the Numbers” page near the end of the book is modern writing, and it is labeled as such inside the book.