{"product_id":"from-traveling-show-to-vaudeville-theatrical-spectacle-in-america-1830-1910-9780801887482","title":"From Traveling Show to Vaudeville: Theatrical Spectacle in America, 1830-1910","description":"\u003cp\u003eBefore 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 \u003ci\u003eFrom Traveling Show to Vaudeville\u003c\/i\u003e, 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIncluded 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMany of the pieces collected here have not been published since their first appearance, making \u003ci\u003eFrom Traveling Show to Vaudeville\u003c\/i\u003e an indispensable resource for historians of popular culture, theater, and nineteenth-century American society.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eRobert M. Lewis \u003c\/b\u003eis a lecturer in American history at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Johns Hopkins University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50328347083026,"sku":"9780801887482","price":44.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_f44a784d-42b7-4732-98d5-c82ac9a48b13.jpg?v=1727736391","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/from-traveling-show-to-vaudeville-theatrical-spectacle-in-america-1830-1910-9780801887482","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}