the great days of the circus poster

?Literally, the traveling tented circus was ?here today?gone tomorrow.?

Since the show would usually be in town for only one day, and give only two performances, the circus management contrived ahead of time many ways to advertise. . . .

The most important tool used by the advertising crew was the lithograph or poster.

Posters of 1/2-sheet size or 1-sheet size (28"x42") were hung in store windows by the hundreds. Poster of larger sizes, such as 3-sheet (42"x84"), 6-, 9-, 16-, 20-, 28-sheet and many other sizes, including, rarely, 100-sheets, were pasted on sheds, barns, buildings, walls and fences. When appropriate space was not available, the billposters simply went to the local lumberyard, purchased the necessary material, built a board fence around a vacant lot, and then pasted their posters on it.

The circus poster was used profusely. The big railroad circuses thought nothing of using 5,000 to 8,000 sheets per town. If competition from another circus showed up, the quantity of paper used might easily double.

The fifty-year period between 1880 and 1930 was what might be called the great days of the circus poster. There were dozens of lithograph houses that turned out handsome work . . . loaded with action and all the colors of the rainbow.?

?Charles Philip Fox, from American Circus Posters in Full Color, Dover Publications, 1978