Selected Letters of P.T. Barnum

Selected Letters of P.T. Barnum PDF Author: Phineas Taylor Barnum
Publisher: New York : Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231054126
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
Gathers correspondence by the famous American showman to his family, friends, writers, businessmen, and other public figures

Selected Letters of P.T. Barnum

Selected Letters of P.T. Barnum PDF Author: Phineas Taylor Barnum
Publisher: New York : Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231054126
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
Gathers correspondence by the famous American showman to his family, friends, writers, businessmen, and other public figures

P.T. Barnum Letters

P.T. Barnum Letters PDF Author: Phineas Taylor Barnum
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Circus
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Letters, autographs, tickets, and a portrait of Barnum. Topics of Barnum's letters include plans for a new museum to replace the one destroyed in 1865, the success and expense of his Hippodrome, and the choice of a name for his cottage by the sea in Bridgeport, Conn. Letters are mainly to Bayard Taylor; other correspondents include H.B. Bult, Walde, and Col. J. Bartram. Tickets include four "editor's tickets" to the Barnum American Museum, with a promotional offer to newspaper editors on the verso.

Letters I Wish P.T. Barnum Had Written

Letters I Wish P.T. Barnum Had Written PDF Author: A. H. Saxon
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 24

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P.T. Barnum

P.T. Barnum PDF Author: A. H. Saxon
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231056878
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 512

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Book Description
I believe hugely in advertising and blowing my own trumpet, beating the gongs, drums, to attract attention to a show, Phineas Taylor Barnum wrote to a publisher in 1860. "I don't believe in 'duping the public,' but I believe in first attracting and then pleasing them." The name P.T. Barnum is virtually synonymous with the fine art of self-advertisement and the apocryphal statement, "There's a sucker born every minute." Nearly a century after his death, Barnum remains one of America's most celebrated figures. In the Selected Letters of P.T. Barnum, A.H. Saxon brings together more than 300 letters written by the self-styled "Prince of Humbugs." Here we see him, opinionated and exuberant, with only the rarest flashes of introspection and self-doubt, haggling with business partners, blustering over politics, and attempting to get such friends as Mark Twain to endorse his latest schemes. Always the king of showmen, Barnum considered himself a museum man first and was forever on the lookout for "curiosities," whether animate or inanimate. His early career included such outright frauds as Joice Heth, the "161-year-old nurse of George Washington," and the Fejee Mermaid-the desiccated head and torso of a monkey sewn to the body of a fish. Although in later years he projected a more solid, respectable image-managing the irreproachable "legitimate" attraction Jenny Lind, becoming a leading light in the temperance crusade, founding the Barnum & Bailey Circus-much of his daily existence continued to be unabashedly devoted to manipulating public opinion so as to acquire for himself and his enterprises what he delightedly termed "notoriety." His famous autobiography, The Life of P.T. Barnum, which he regularly augmented during the last quarter century of his life, was itself a masterpiece of self-promotion. "Will you have the kindness to announce that I am writing my life & that fifty-seven different publishers have applied for the chance of publishing it," he wrote to a newspaper editor, adding, "Such is the fact-and if it wasn't, why still it ain't a bad announcement." The Selected Letters of P.T. Barnum captures the magic of this consummate showman's life, truly his own "greatest show on earth."

Letters I Wish P.T. Barnum Had Written

Letters I Wish P.T. Barnum Had Written PDF Author: Arthur Hartley Saxon
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 16

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Barnum

Barnum PDF Author: Robert Wilson
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 1501118714
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
“Robert Wilson’s Barnum, the first full-dress biography in twenty years, eschews clichés for a more nuanced story…It is a life for our times, and the biography Barnum deserves.” —The Wall Street Journal P.T. Barnum is the greatest showman the world has ever seen. As a creator of the Barnum & Baily Circus and a champion of wonder, joy, trickery, and “humbug,” he was the founding father of American entertainment—and as Robert Wilson argues, one of the most important figures in American history. Nearly 125 years after his death, the name P.T. Barnum still inspires wonder. Robert Wilson’s vivid new biography captures the full genius, infamy, and allure of the ebullient showman, who, from birth to death, repeatedly reinvented himself. He learned as a young man how to wow crowds, and built a fortune that placed him among the first millionaires in the United States. He also suffered tragedy, bankruptcy, and fires that destroyed his life’s work, yet willed himself to recover and succeed again. As an entertainer, Barnum courted controversy throughout his life—yet he was also a man of strong convictions, guided in his work not by a desire to deceive, but an eagerness to thrill and bring joy to his audiences. He almost certainly never uttered the infamous line, “There’s a sucker born every minute,” instead taking pride in giving crowds their money’s worth and more. Robert Wilson, editor of The American Scholar, tells a gripping story in Barnum, one that’s imbued with the same buoyant spirit as the man himself. In this “engaging, insightful, and richly researched new biography” (New York Journal of Books), Wilson adeptly makes the case for P.T. Barnum’s place among the icons of American history, as a figure who represented, and indeed created, a distinctly American sense of optimism, industriousness, humor, and relentless energy.

Why I Am a Universalist

Why I Am a Universalist PDF Author: Phineas Taylor Barnum
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Universalism
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Funny Stories Told by Phineas T. Barnum

Funny Stories Told by Phineas T. Barnum PDF Author: Phineas Taylor Barnum
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : American wit and humor
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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The Showman and the Slave

The Showman and the Slave PDF Author: Benjamin Reiss
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674042654
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
In this compelling story about one of the nineteenth century's most famous Americans, Benjamin Reiss uses P. T. Barnum's Joice Heth hoax to examine the contours of race relations in the antebellum North. Barnum's first exhibit as a showman, Heth was an elderly enslaved woman who was said to be the 161-year-old former nurse of the infant George Washington. Seizing upon the novelty, the newly emerging commercial press turned her act--and especially her death--into one of the first media spectacles in American history. In piecing together the fragmentary and conflicting evidence of the event, Reiss paints a picture of people looking at history, at the human body, at social class, at slavery, at performance, at death, and always--if obliquely--at themselves. At the same time, he reveals how deeply an obsession with race penetrated different facets of American life, from public memory to private fantasy. Concluding the book is a piece of historical detective work in which Reiss attempts to solve the puzzle of Heth's real identity before she met Barnum. His search yields a tantalizing connection between early mass culture and a slave's subtle mockery of her master.

Life of P. T. Barnum

Life of P. T. Barnum PDF Author: Phineas Taylor Barnum
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 426

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Book Description