Victorian Popular Culture (Adam Matthew)

Victorian Popular Culture, published by Adam Matthew Digital, is a subscription-only resource, which is available here at the Bodleian Library, through SOLO and OxLIP+ and in many other research libraries.  It perfectly complements the Entertainment section of ProQuest's The John Johnson Collection: an archive of printed ephemera. Its main sections are Music hall, theatre and popular entertainment; Circuses, sideshows and freaks; Moving pictures, optical entertainments and the advent of cinema; and Spiritualism, sensation and magic.

Although, as the title implies, largely based on the Victorian era, there is one item dating back to the16th century, four from the 17th and a large number from the 18th and 20th centuries.

The material is from:
The Harry Price Library of Magical Literature, Senate House, University of London
Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin
National Fairground Archives, University of Sheffield (see my last post)
The National Archives (UK)
Chetham's Library, Manchester
May Moore Duprez Archives
The Bill Douglas Centre for the History of Cinema and Popular Culture, University of Exeter
BFI National Archive

Features include full-text searching, a chronological timeline, essays, secondary resources, slide shows, innovative 360 degree technologies, audio files from Saydisc records and video clips.

(C) Adam Matthew Digital

It is always a pleasure to be able to cross-search collections, especially such rich ones. There are the usual search and advance search options and also browsable lists by title, author, date and type of material.  A symbol indicates which section of the project the material is from (e.g  the card symbol above for Spiritualism, sensation and magic). Although books, diaries, correspondence, journals, etc  are included, the substance of the project is ephemera. 

This is an indispensable resource for Entertainment historians.

The National Fairground Archive

The National Fairground Archive at the University Library, University of Sheffield, under the leadership of Professor Vanessa Toulmin, has holdings which document fairs, circuses, menageries, magic, optical shows, etc. A subject list gives the scope of the collection, which includes 4,500 books, 250 journals titles, moving images, photographs, drawings, audio material, correspondence, diaries, cuttings, account books, maps, charts, plans, teaching materials, notebooks etc, as well as ephemera: postcards, trade and advertising material, programmes, calendars, almanacs, posters, proclamations, and 20,000 posters and handbills. There are word processed indexes (currently under revision) to each of these genres.

(C) NFA, University of Sheffield

The site includes articles, bibliographies and links to other websites and resources.

Researchers can visit in person, without an appointment Monday to Wednesday, with an appointment on Thursday.  Opening hours are posted online.

The National Fairground Archive has just launched NFA digital, with images added weekly. 19,720 images are currently online  and these can be browsed or searched by collection, period, subject, place and name. The Search tips, especially the explanations of themes and subject terms, are very helpful.

You can follow the National Fairground item on Twitter: @professorvaness


The subscription site: Victorian Popular Culture (Adam Matthew) which will be covered more thoroughly in my next post, includes material from the National Fairground Archive

(C) NFA, University of Sheffield

New York Public Library digital collections

Happy Thanksgiving. The New York Public Library Digital Gallery contains a wealth of ephemera. You can search by collection (such as the Billy Rose Theater Collection or the Jerome Robbins Dance Division) or by subject.

(C) New York Public Library

(C) New York Public Library

Below is a selection of circus and magic posters from the Billy Rose Theatre Collection