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From Traveling Show to Vaudeville: Theatrical Spectacle in America, 1830-1910
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From Traveling Show to Vaudeville: Theatrical Spectacle in America, 1830-1910 Hardcover - 2003

by Robert M. Lewis (Editor)


From the publisher

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 From Traveling Show to Vaudeville, Robert M. Lewis has assembled a remarkable collection of nineteenth- and early twentieth-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 here have not been published since their first appearance, making From Traveling Show to Vaudeville an indispensable resource for historians of popular culture, theater, and nineteenth-century American society.

From the rear cover

Robert M. Lewis has assembled a remarkable collection of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century primary sources that document America's age of theatrical spectacle. In eight parts, Lewis explores dime museums, minstrelsy, circuses, melodramas, burlesque shows, Wild West shows, amusement parks, and vaudeville.

From the jacket flap

Robert M. Lewis has assembled a remarkable collection of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century primary sources that document America's age of theatrical spectacle. In eight parts, Lewis explores dime museums, minstrelsy, circuses, melodramas, burlesque shows, Wild West shows, amusement parks, and vaudeville.

--Mark Evan Swartz, author of Oz before the Rainbow: L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz on Stage and Screen to 1939

Details

  • Title From Traveling Show to Vaudeville: Theatrical Spectacle in America, 1830-1910
  • Author Robert M. Lewis (Editor)
  • Binding Hardcover
  • Pages 400
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Johns Hopkins University Press
  • Date September 30, 2003
  • Illustrated Yes
  • ISBN 9780801870873 / 0801870879
  • Weight 1.6 lbs (0.73 kg)
  • Dimensions 9.82 x 6.26 x 1.22 in (24.94 x 15.90 x 3.10 cm)
  • Ages 22 to UP years
  • Grade levels 17 - UP
  • Themes
    • Chronological Period: 19th Century
  • Library of Congress subjects Performing arts - United States - History -, Performing arts - United States - History -
  • Library of Congress Catalog Number 2002152161
  • Dewey Decimal Code 791.097

Media reviews

Citations

  • Choice, 04/01/2004, Page 1482

About the author

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

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From Traveling Show to Vaudevill: Theatrical Spectacle in America 1830-1910
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From Traveling Show to Vaudeville: Theatrical Spectacle in America, 1830–1910
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