Rare Books
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Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
Closed on Tuesdays
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
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Visual Materials
This collection contains more than 650 printed items that relate to circuses in the United States from the 1850s to the 1990s. The collection consists of advertising and promotional materials, business records, and illustrations produced for or pertaining to circuses, their tours and shows, staff and performers, acts and exhibits, and animals. Materials are arranged in three series: small-size prints and ephemera (11 x 14 inches or less); large-size prints and ephemera (more than 11 x 14 inches); and broadsides and handbills. The collection has 206 large-size items comprised mainly of lithographic posters containing brightly colored images of featured circus acts, performers, and animals that were typically posted outdoors in advance of the circus coming to town. Small-size items in the collection number more than 320 and are comprised mainly of advertising and promotion ephemera and business documents such as trade cards, programs and souvenir books, route cards, envelopes, tickets, songsters, and printed billheads and letterheads. The 130 broadsides, handbills, and related advertisements consist primarily of long, narrow broadsides printed on newspaper paper in black ink using letterpress type that advertised upcoming circus shows and were intended to be distributed by hand, left in stacks in public places, or posted on walls, fences, or in windows in advance of the circus's arrival in a town. This collection provides a resource for studying the history of the American circus and its impact on popular entertainment and advertising in the 19th and 20th centuries. As graphic materials, the items offer evidence of the development of printmaking techniques and trends, and of the artists, engraves, lithographers, printers, and publishers involved in the creation of these prints.
priJLC_ENT_Circus
Visual Materials
Image of an eye-level view of eight lions performing in an outdoor caged arena with two lion tamers.
priHHC_ENT_0000001
Visual Materials
Image of a tiger riding on the back of an elephant before a cage wall in the right half of the poster; the left half of the poster contains text advertising an April 22, [1966], show in Hemet, California.
priJLC_ENT_000087
Visual Materials
Image of numerous circus performances occurring simultaneously in a tented arena, including acrobats jumping in the air, aerialists swinging from trapezes, a whiteface clown gesturing, an equestrian in a ring with three horses, and lions performing in a cage.
priJLC_ENT_000075
Visual Materials
Image of a circus menagerie with spectators viewing animals in caged circus wagons and fenced-in areas; animals include giraffes, a hippopotamus in a cage labeled "World's largest and only trained hippopotamus," a rhinoceros, zebras, lions, tigers, pears, polar bears, elephants, and camels; date sheet for a Tuesday, July 30, [1946], show in Lorain, Ohio, pasted below image.
priJLC_ENT_000077