National Fairground Archive

Notes on the CFA Collection

by Amanda Bernstein, compiler of the CFA library catalogue

The Circus Friends Association library of over 900 books came to the National Fairground Archive in boxes in the spring of 2001. Thanks to this generous donation, as a result of the close collaboration between the CFA and NFA, the existing collections in the Archive have been greatly enhanced and complemented. Before the CFA library came to the Archive, material on circuses was neither adequately nor comprehensively represented within the Archive. The NFA held mostly archival material on circuses, with a few key texts, centring on very early shows and circus proprietors such as Philip Astley (1742-1814). One of the ‘stars’ of the CFA collection is an early publication, “Astley’s system of equestrian education”, published probably in London in 1801, and forming an important part of a small sub-collection of equestrian texts including Frederick Taylor’s “Telfer’s system of horse taming, and practical management of the horse”, Samuel Sidney’s “The book of the horse” (2^nd ed., 1880), and Professor Norton B. Smith’s “Practical treatise on the breaking and taming of wild & vicious horses” [1892]. The equestrian collection also includes twentieth century texts such as the four books published in the 1950s by Henrik Jan Lijsen.

The collection is extensive and comprehensive. There are books on virtually every aspect of circus life from individual acts, to acts of Parliament, from erecting a Big Top, to the logistics of transporting circuses. The works are not all historical either; there are works of fiction, photography, and juvenile literature all of which help to create a greater understanding of the many contrasts in circus life; of the romance, tragedy, spectacle and undoubted hardships endured by those involved. Notable authors who have contributed to the myth and legend of circus include Lady Eleanor Smith, who, in 1945, donated all her circus books to the CFA, some bearing her signature; Ruth Manning-Sanders; Courtney Ryley Cooper, an American writer who, after having first joined a circus aged 16, went on to write crime books and ghost-wrote articles under J. Edgar Hoover’s name in the 1930s. Many of the books are presentation copies, signed by the authors, which makes this an intimate, thoughtful collection, rather than a hastily purchased grab bag of assortments linked by a common theme.

Books by and about P.T. Barnum are of course, a highlight of the collection, with some nice additions in two of the books of his signature and inscriptions. The foldout colour advertisement poem, printed by Goode Bros., and dated circa 1890 is of particular interest. In it, the author tries to capture the glamour, danger, and excitement of the world-famous “Greatest Show”. The penultimate vignette features “Dear Jumbo”, in the flesh in the foreground, and in the background, his skeleton. This was probably produced for the return to British shores of Barnum’s show. Barnum’s reputation had been severely damaged after he bought Jumbo and took him to America where he was tragically killed.

Remaining on the American theme, Buffalo Bill features strongly in the collection with his autobiography, numerous sensational, imaginative, and more scholarly biographies of this great and influential showman who captured the imaginations of showpeople on both sides of the Atlantic. The books enhance the NFA’s Shufflebottom Family Collection that contains many photographs of the important fair family’s Wild West Show, which was influenced by Buffalo Bill’s original travelling show.

Circus life internationally is represented within the collection. What is particularly interesting here is that there are, in many instances, both the British and foreign editions of the same book. The autobiography of Carl Hagenbeck, for example, published in Berlin in 1909 and printed in black letter is notable. Amongst the foreign language publications, the French clown books, from the end of the nineteenth- to the first few decades of the twentieth-century, really stand out, particularly those about Grock and the Fratellinis. The 1923 edition of “Les Fratellini” by Pierre Mariel has the most poignant and fascinating photographic portraits of the three brothers.

The book with arguably the most beautiful illustrations by Jules Garnier is “Les jeux du cirque et la vie foraine”, by Hugues Le Roux, published in Paris by E. Plon, Nourrit circa 1889. We also have the English translation with the title “Acrobats and mountebanks”. A family historian looking for information on one of his ancestors, Princess Paulina the Dutch midget, contacted the Archive on the off chance that we might be able to help. As it happened, he found many items relating to her, but he was most excited at finding in the Le Roux book, a pristine hand-tinted illustration of Princess Paulina, standing on a table top, demurely holding the hand of a gentleman, which visitor had never before seen. Monsieur Le Roux, after having interviewed the fifteen-and-three-quarter inches Princess Paulina, kissed her hand and informs us, “…like new-born babies, a little dwarf smells like a grey mouse”.

The CFA book collection compares favourably with other similar collections in libraries worldwide. A visiting scholar from the University of California Santa Barbara, home of the Toole-Stott Circus Collection, was most impressed with not only the scope, but importantly for her, the accessibility of the CFA collection, and the fact that there is a printed copy of the catalogue. Although the Toole-Stott collection contains approximately 1300 monographs, they date from 1886-1970, whereas the CFA collection is still growing.

A circus collection of great importance is the Circus and Allied Arts Collection at the Milner Library, Illinois State University. In total they have over 100,000 items, which includes over 6,000 books, all of which have been catalogued. In production is a CD-Rom of their circus posters. The former curator produced a bibliography of the rarest items in the collection in the 1970s, a copy of which has been ordered for the NFA.

The important thing to remember is that what we have here in the CFA collection is a valuable, accessible, and growing resource, now available to a wider research community, complementing and enhancing not only the National Fairground Archive collection, but also the University Library’s special collections.