Nineteenth Century Circus Poster Art

by Steve Ward

This book opens up a window into the exhilarating world of the nineteenth century circus. It draws upon images extracted from the Cryer Collection of nineteenth century circus posters and places the images within their social and historical context.

138 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2018

About the author

Retired teacher and actor - now a researcher, writer, and public speaker with thirteen published books (two under the name of Stephen Ward). Currently working on a book looking at medieval entertainments.
PhD in Social History for published works on the social history and culture of the circus.

Reviews

[Steve Ward · Rating 4 out of 5]

Steve Ward has recorded many aspects of the history of the origins and development of the circus in a series of well-written books, and here he describes with copious illustrations the little-known collection of circus posters in the Cryer Collection in Wakefield’s Local Studies Library. The richness of the Cryer Collection in its extent – some fifteen volumes – and its wealth of insights into the life of Wakefield in John Cryer’s lifetime (c1781 – 1864) are sadly little-known, even locally, despite the best efforts of our excellent Libraries staff to bring them into the light, and it should be a priority for public funding to see them properly preserved.

It is most praiseworthy that Steve has begun a process of publishing at least selected aspects of the Cryer Collection, and he has both prefaced his study by an admirably brief but explicit history of the early circus to give the reader context, and then proceeded to enhance the value of the published posters by a series of short but revealing notes on each of the themes of the circus posters concerned – advertising, equestrian acts, leapers, jugglers and feats of strength, rope walking and dancing, clowns, animals and dramatic spectaculars. The posters are well-chosen to illustrate the themes, and are as well-reproduced as the chosen paper will allow; it might have been of advantage to consider art paper though self-publishing economics may not allow this step.
Steve’s descriptions and the posters themselves form a very good introduction to both the Cryer Collection and to the history of the early circus, particularly in Wakefield, and well deserve to be read by all those interested in either topic. £9.00 on Amazon.
Four stars – good introduction to the subject and to an excellent local collection which deserves to be much better known.