Sawdust & Spangles

He ran off with a wagon show at fourteen, and helped invent the Greatest Show on Earth.

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About this edition

W. C. Coup was P. T. Barnum's partner and the man who first moved a circus by rail, over Barnum's objection and against the judgment of every railroad official he asked. The gamble paid, and it remade the industry. He went on to build the New York Hippodrome on the site of Madison Square Garden, to open the New York Aquarium, and to tour the Enchanted Rolling Palaces.

These are his recollections, dictated at odd moments in the big show tent and in the special car, and published in 1901, six years after his death. They read like a working showman talking rather than a memoirist composing.

Here is the business as he found it. Beasts bought wholesale and hunted in the African interior. Freaks made, promoted and exposed: the Cardiff Giant buried and resurrected, a two-headed girl outdone by a three-headed rival, the Aztec Children unmasked. The first attempt to move a circus by rail, and seven heartbreaking days on the road. A runaway circus train at night, panic among the animals, a single track and a broken rail. A bear loose in Fifth Avenue. A spectator who leapt into the ring to shoot the clown. And, at the last, a fortune turning on the toss of a coin.

Reprinted complete, with the nine original plates from the first edition.

Details

• W. C. Coup
• Solocosmo Press
• The Lightbound Library
• Cover painting, Carnivale, by Jessica von Braun
• Paperback, 6 × 9, 166 pages