Overview

Before phonographs and moving pictures, live performances dominated American popular entertainment. Carnivals, circuses, dioramas, magicians, mechanical marvels, musicians and theatrical troupes all visited rural fairgrounds, small-town opera houses and big-city palaces around the country, giving millions of people an escape from their everyday lives for a dime or a quarter. In this book, Robert M. Lewis has assembled a collection of 19th- and early 20th-century primary sources that document America's age of theatrical spectacle. In eight parts, Lewis explores, in turn, dime museums, minstrelsy, circuses, melodramas, burlesque shows, Wild West shows, amusement parks, and vaudeville. Included in this compendium are biographies, programs, ephemera produced by theatrical entrepreneurs to lure audiences to their shows, photographs, scripts and song lyrics as well as newspaper accounts, reviews and interviews with such figures as P.T. Barnum and Buffalo Bill Cody. Lewis also gives us reminiscences about and reactions to various shows by members of audiences, including such prominent writers as Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Carl Sandburg, Walt Whitman, Louisa May Alcott, Charles Dickens, O. Henry and Maxim Gorky. Each section also includes a concise introduction that places the genre of spectacle into its historical and cultural context and suggests major interpretive themes. The book closes with a bibliographic essay that identifies relevant scholarly works. Many of the pieces collected have not been published since their first appearance.

Full Product Details

Author:   Robert M. Lewis (Senior Lecturer in American History, Historical Studies)
Publisher:   Johns Hopkins University Press
Imprint:   Johns Hopkins University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.60cm , Height: 3.30cm , Length: 23.50cm
Weight:   0.748kg
ISBN:  

9780801870873

ISBN 10:   0801870879
Pages:   400
Publication Date:   20 January 2004
Recommended Age:   From 17
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional and scholarly ,  College/higher education ,  Professional & Vocational ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Out of stock  
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Table of Contents

"Contents: Introduction: From Celebration to Show BusinessTHE DIME MUSEUM Early Museum Shows Selling and Seeing Curiosities Commentary Dog Days of the Museum MINSTRELSY Routines: Songs, Speeches, Dialogue, and Farce Commentary: Rise and Fall of ""Slave"" Creativity Reminiscences Musical Comedy: Harrigan's Mulligan Guard Confessions of an African American Minstrel THE CIRCUS The Circus Debated The Early Circus Big Business The Audience MELODRAMA A Plea for an American Drama Classic Melodrama Classic Melodrama's Audiences The Ten-Twenty-Thirty Melodramas""LEG SHOW"" BURLESQUE EXTRAVAGANZAS The Black Crook A Burlesque of Burlesque Reactions to the Controversy The Popular-Price CircuitTHE WILD WEST SHOW Origins Extracts from Buffalo Bill's Wild West Programs Exhibiting Indians SUMMER AMUSEMENT PARKS Journalists and the ""New"" Coney Showmen and the ""Amusement Business"" Popular Responses Two Critics of Coney's BanalityVAUDEVILLE Vaudeville Defined The Business Routines"

Reviews

<p>All-encompassing... it is likely to become a standard work, for media students as well as for American history enthusiasts.--Stephen Bottomore Early Popular Visual Culture (01/01/0001)

All-encompassing... it is likely to become a standard work, for media students as well as for American history enthusiasts. -- Stephen Bottomore, Early Popular Visual Culture

Author Information

Robert M. Lewis is a lecturer in American history at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom.

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