(Circus, American) | An early broadside advertising an exotic menagerie of animals

(Circus, American)

Purdy, Welch, Finch, Wright's Menagerie of Living Animals. [Philadelphia: Young, 1832]

Broadside playbill (588 x 426 mm). Printed in an assortment of types with with three lines of manuscript additions, large woodcut vignette depicting a Bengal tiger by R. G. Harrison; not examined out of frame, lightly browned, silked, a few closed tears at edges, minor losses at folds. Framed and glazed with Plexiglas.

A significant document in the history of the American circus.

The group that presented the tiger and a host of other animals was an impressive quartet. Ed Finch was an experienced animal exhibitor and manager who had featured "Little Bet," the third elephant to be shown in America. Charles Wright, who was responsible for "Bet," was better known as the first lion tamer in America. Eisenhart Purdy was one of the foremost menagerie men of this time, and Rufus Welch was well known and admired by his contemporaries.

Menageries of exotic animals such as the one advertised here were often seen as a religious spectacle, revealing the dominance of man over God's brute creations. 

REFERENCE:

Exemplars, p. 272; EE, pp. 94-95