Visual Materials
Couriers and Newspapers
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G-L (Grand Circus Royal - J.H. LaPearl)
Visual Materials
This folder contains show bills produced for the following circuses: Grand Circus Royal & English Menagerie & Astley; Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus; William P. Hall; Richard Havemann; Holland & MacMahon; Howe; Ireland Bros.; Jones Brothers; King & Franklin; and J. H. La Pearl.
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A-Bai (Bailey - Barnum)
Visual Materials
This folder contains show bills produced for the following circuses: G. F. Bailey & Co.; Barnum's Museum; P.T. Barnum; Barnum & Bailey; and Barnum & London.
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Series II. Circus Prints and Ephemera (large size)
Visual Materials
This series contains more than 200 printed 19th and 20th century circus posters. The posters date from 1846 to the 1980s, with the bulk of the items spanning from the 1890s to the 1960s. These prints were used as promotional materials and typically posted outdoors in advance of the circus coming to town. These posters, primarily color lithographs, were produced by American printers for American circuses, though there are approximately seven posters with French or German text that Barnum & Bailey used for shows in Europe in the late 1890s and early 1900s. The posters typically contain brightly colored images of featured circus acts, performers, or animals. Many of the items include depictions of clowns, gymnasts, aerialists, acrobats, jugglers, animal trainers, or equestrians, portraits of circus owners such as P. T. Barnum, J. A. Bailey, and the Ringling Brothers, or scenes of street parades, historical pageants, circus wagons and railroad cars, tents, arenas, spectators and crowds, zoo menageries, and animals including bears, elephants, giraffes, gorillas, horses, lions, monkeys, rhinoceroses, and tigers. The posters, primarily color lithographs, range in size from approximately 12 x 16 inches to 117 x 41 inches, and while outdoor circus posters might take up entire building walls, most of the items in the collection consist of "one-sheet" posters sized to approximately 28 x 42 inches. Approximately twenty American printing firms are represented in the collection, though the Strobridge Lithographing Company of Cincinnati, Ohio, printed more than sixty of the posters, and the Erie Litho. and Printing Company of Erie, Pennsylvania, printed nearly thirty. About a quarter of the posters have date sheets, which are small strips with printed text containing information about the date and location of a particular upcoming show, pasted to the bottom of the poster. Among the earliest items is an 1850s four-sheet poster for A. Turner & Co's Combined Menagerie and Circus, and one of the most recent is a 1980s poster for the Ford Bros. Circus. While over fifty circuses are represented, most have between one and ten posters; the circuses of Barnum and Bailey and the Ringling Brothers comprise the largest subset in the collection with more than eighty posters among them.
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Phineas Taylor Barnum
Visual Materials
Image of a head-and-shoulders portrait of Barnum and Bailey Circus proprietor P.T. Barnum, as an older man, with his signature "Phineas Taylor Barnum" printed in the bottom margin.
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Daily Evening Standard
Visual Materials
4 pages with a front-page article on P.T. with a Barnum's Museum and Menagerie New Bedford, Massachusetts
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Series III. Circus Broadsides and Handbills
Visual Materials
This series contains more than 120 printed 19th and early 20th century circus broadsides, handbills, and related advertisements. These bills publicize shows for approximately 60 different American circuses between the 1820s and 1930s, with the bulk of the items dating from 1860 to 1920. The printed text typically includes the name of the circus, featured attractions, acts, and performers, admission prices, and the date and location of shows. The materials range in size from approximately 10 x 6 inches to 42 x 7 inches and consist primarily of single-sheet advertisements for circus shows that 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. Among the names given to these advertisements, according to their size and mode of distribution, are broadsides, dodgers, handbills, hangers, heralds, posters, playbills, and show bills. The notices in this series are primarily long, narrow broadsides printed on newsprint paper in black ink using letterpress type of varying fonts and sizes, though some have colored ink, colored paper, or woodcut illustrations. The series also includes one 1881 circus courier (a four-page bill) and four newspaper issues with articles or advertisements about circuses. Among the most commonly credited printers in this series are Clarry & Reilley (New York, New York); the Courier Company (Buffalo, New York); Erie Litho & Printing Co. (Erie, Pennsylvania); and the Russell & Morgan Printing Company (Cincinnati, Ohio). The bills that include show location information promote shows in the following states: California, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Texas, Vermont, and Washington, D.C.
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