1890's Barnum & Bailey posters

These Chromolithographic posters from the end of the nineteenth century advertise P. T. Barnum and James Anthony Bailey circus, routinely billed as The Greatest Show on Earth. The circus first appeared to the public in 1875 as the rather lengthy P.T. Barnum’s Great Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan, and Hippodrome, then later P.T. Barnum’s Traveling World’s Fair, Great Roman Hippodrome and Greatest Show On Earth and, following the Bailey merger P.T. Barnum’s Greatest Show On Earth, And The Great London Circus, Sanger’s Royal British Menagerie and The Grand International Allied Shows United.

Teaming up with its main competitor, the resulting “Barnum & Bailey Circus” arrived in 1882. Its exhibits included “the world’s largest elephant”.

Barnum died in 1891, and is buried in Connecticut, in a cemetery he designed himself.