The Main Attraction
Barnum’s life was as full of variety as his shows. Born the eldest of five children to a Connecticut innkeeper, he was a natural entrepreneur cashing in on lottery mania (and you thought it was a recent invention) then turning to publishing. His later autobiography, marketed on a buy-a-circus ticket get-a-book-free basis, was the second best seller in nineteenth century America; the first? The New Testament. Bankruptcy and law suits were also common emblems before he set out collecting and exhibiting curiosities, often of the human kind: the oldest woman in the world; the smallest man in the world; a mermaid. He met Queen Victoria, engaged Jenny Lind ‘The Swedish Nightingale’ for an unprecedented thousand dollars a night, and combined with James Bailey to form the definitive Barnum and Bailey Circus before dying in 1891. Larger than life, charismatic, showman, trickster, the very stuff of legend.