The Barnum & Bailey Greatest Show on Earth Songster

Step under the big top without leaving your parlor. This 1894 songster collects the tunes that made P.T. Barnum's legendary circus singable, hummable, unforgettable. These are the songs audiences carried home in their heads after the final act, the melodies families gathered around pianos to perform. The lyrics champion what mattered in the Gilded Age: a snug little home, a wife's loving kiss, the bond between father and daughter, the humor of everyday mishaps. Here is Victorian-era pop music, the soundtrack to America's greatest entertainment obsession, when the circus was the closest thing to cinema and the world wondered at sword swallowers and little people and the magnificent beasts of the known world. This isn't sheet music for performers. It's a window into what ordinary people sang, what made them laugh, what made them homesick, what made them feel tender toward the ones they loved. Perfect for anyone curious about the roots of American entertainment, the texture of daily life in the 1890s, or simply the strange comfort of songs that have outlived their original context by more than a century.