Bibrowski, Stephan | Most likely reading A Midsummer Night's Dream

Bibrowski, Stephan 

Le favori des femmes et des enfants. Lionel l'Homme-Lion mi homme mi lion né en Russie Unique! Vivant! Véritable!. Hamburg: Lith. Adolph Friedländer, ca. 1915 (no. 6306)

Color lithograph poster (26 7/8 x 37 1/4 in.; 682 x 947 mm). Fold and other creases, tiny loss with some recoloring at intersecting folds, a number of short marginal tears, rebacked with linen.

One of the most famous sideshow performers of all time, Stephan Bibrowski (1890–1932) was born with hypertrichosis, a condition that his mother, who abandoned him to a German manager named Sedlmayer, attributed to her having seen her husband mauled by a lion while she was pregnant. 

Billed as Lionel the Lion-faced Boy, the gentle-mannered Bibrowski joined with Barnum & Bailey when he was eleven, and he spent most of his career in the United States, travelling with the Circus or exhibiting at Coney Island, with occasional tours through Europe.

This image of Lionel was adapted for the cover of the paperback edition of Jay's Journal of Anomalies.

REFERENCE:

cf. Circus, pp. 390–91