California
The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens
Jay T. Last Collection of Graphic Arts and Social History
The Last Collection has more than 200,000 prints, posters, and ephemera of mostly American origin, and contains works by more than five hundred commercial lithographic companies with a large collection of circus posters.
University of California Santa Barbara Library – Special Research Collections
Performing Arts Collection: Circus and Magic Collections
Raymond Toole-Stott Circus Collection
The Raymond Toole-Stott Circus Collection contains approximately 1,300 monographs pertaining to the circus in Great Britain, other European countries, and the United States. Assembled by Raymond Toole-Stott, British author and compiler of the multi-volume Circus and Allied Arts: A World Bibliography. There is also an accompanying manuscript collection with correspondence, drafts of writings, research materials, scrapbooks, children’s books, circus programs, photographs, and magazines.
Guide to the California Circus Photographs, 1945 – 1944
The collection consists of photographic negatives of California circuses from 1945 to 1955, including the Clyde Beatty, Bell Brothers, Biller Brothers and Yankee Paterson Circuses.
University of Southern California, Regional History Collection
Ralph Rodgers and Percy Turner Collection
The Ralph Rodgers and Percy Turner Circus Collection documents the collective interests of a circus model builder/ miniature circus owner and a real circus owner who became friends and whose circus memorabilia. The collection contains ephemera, correspondence, photographs, books, records, costumes, and a large amount of circus model plans and drawings kept by Ralph Rodgers. A portion of the collection represents the history of the Percy Turner Circus, one of the first circuses owned by an African American based in the southern California area.
Colorado
Denver Public Library
The Western History Collection at the Denver Public Library is recognized as one of the most significant collections of Western Americana in the country. The collection reflects all phases of development of the trans-Mississippi West, with strong focus on the Rocky Mountain West. The collection continues to grow and presently includes 250,000+ cataloged books, pamphlets, atlases, maps, and microform titles. In addition, it offers over 600,000 photographs, 4,000+ manuscript archives, and a remarkable collection of Western fine art and prints to researchers across the world.
Connecticut
The Barnum Museum is the leading authority on P.T. Barnum’s life and work and the collection contains more than 60,000 artifacts relating to Barnum, Bridgeport, and 19th century America. Collection and finding aids are available through the Connecticut Digital Archives: https://collections.ctdigitalarchive.org/islandora/search/circus?type=edismax
Bridgeport Library, Bridgeport History Center
Circus material represents one of the major collecting areas of the Bridgeport History Center, due to both the city’s history as the adopted hometown of P.T. Barnum and the Winter Quarters that were housed in the city until 1927. A robust combination of archival collections and secondary works offer a wide variety of lenses into circus history, with a particular emphasis on the late 19th century.
Yale University, Archives
These papers contain correspondence, personal papers, photographs, a scrapbook, and memorabilia documenting the life and career of Nate Salsbury, nineteenth-century actor, and co-owner of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. The papers span the dates 1860-1965, but the bulk of the material covers the years 1866-1903.
District of Columbia
The Library of Congress has in its collections the New York Clipper, Billboard, New York Mercury, Wilke’s Spirit of the Times, New York Mirror, New York Dramatic News, Sporting, and Theatrical Journal and Byrnes’ Dramatic Times. These are early periodicals that carried circus information.
Library of Congress, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers
Chronicling America provides access to information about historic newspapers and select digitized newspaper pages.
Library of Congress, Circus, carnival, and rodeo poster collection
Includes posters created to advertise many kinds of general circuses, acrobatic and animal acts, and wild west shows, including Barnum & Bailey, Forepaugh & Sells, Ringling Brothers, Buffalo Bill, and other companies. In addition, a few posters feature carnivals and rodeos. The bulk of the posters were produced in the United States, but circuses held in other countries are also represented. Some posters are by identified artists or printmakers, such as Strobridge Litho. Co.
National Archives
The catalog currently provides access to over 2 million electronic records currently in the Electronic Records Archives, which are not available elsewhere online.
Smithsonian
The catalog provides access to over 16 million records of Smithsonian objects, archives and library material including more than 5.1 million online images, audio & videos, and blog posts.
Florida
Florida State University, Special Collections & Archives
Harrison Sayer Circus Collection
The Harrison Sayre Circus Collection contains approximately 8,000 photographs, including snapshots, slides, and negatives, as well as circus programs, posters and other circus memorabilia collected from circuses attended mostly in the mid-Atlantic region during the second half of the 20th century. As a collection, many of the photographs offer a comprehensive study of circus performer costume design and production style.
Florida State University, The Ringling
https://www.ringling.org/archives
https://emuseum.ringling.org/emuseum/collections
https://www.ringling.org/art-library-0
The Ringling collection includes books, rare handbills and art prints, circus paper, business records, wardrobe, performing props, as well as all types of circus equipment. There are also 19th- and early 20th-century posters and props used by famous performers. A large collection of photographs, circus history and literature includes newspaper clippings. The extensive Tibbals and Thayer collections are located in the Archives.
International Independent Showmen’s Association, Carnival Museum
The International Independent Showmen’s Museum contains over 52, 000 square feet of American Carnival and traveling show history preserving it for future generations to come. Not to mention acres of show wagons that allowed the carnivals to travel to the cities and towns of America bringing excitement and entertainment to families throughout the years.
State Library and Archives of Florida, Florida Memory
The Florida Memory Program contains a wide range of images of circuses in Florida: Circus Hall of Fame; Circus World theme park; The Ringling, Sailor Circus; Flying High Circus; amusement rides; winter quarters; model circuses; and Joseph J. Steinmetz images.
University of South Florida, Tampa Library Special Collections
Showmen’s Photographic and Oral History Project Collections
Images and oral histories from the International Independent Showmen’s Museum Collection portrays the life and times of the ever-changing American carnival from the late 1800s to the modern day. Featured in the collection are many photographs related to the means of transporting carnival equipment and personnel. There are carnival rides, game concessions, shows, and show fronts.
Georgia
Emory University, Robert W. Woodruff Library, Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library
Robert Harold Brisendine Papers
Brisendine was a circus researcher, whose specialty was circus dates. He collected information on all kinds of shows, from large shows like Ringling Brothers & Barnum and Bailey to Wild West Shows to old time Medicine Shows to dog and pony shows. He did invaluable original research focusing on the routes of particular plays and recording the entertainments that visited specific cities. Includes research files, circus publications and printed materials, King Bros. Circus expense ledgers, Allen P. Wescott scrapbooks, correspondence, photographs, and negatives, published material about circuses, and audio recordings.
Illinois
The Newberry
Irving Pond American Circus Collection, 1891 – 1939
The bulk of material consists of Circus programs and reviews and Circus Fans Association material dating from the 1920′-1930’s. The Circus programs illustrate over twenty circuses. The theater publications represent a diverse array of Chicago and Midwest theaters. A small collection of photographs document performers and circus life at the turn of the 20th century. Pond’s illustrations and drawings created for his book titled, Big Top Rhythms, highlight a variety circus acts. The remainder of the collection consists of circus clippings, publicity, and memorabilia.
Illinois State University Bloomington-Normal, Milner Library
Circus & Allied Arts Collection
In addition to over 8,000 books, the Circus and Allied Arts Collection includes photographs, posters, programs, route books, correspondence, business records, band scores, costumes, and multimedia materials. In addition to book items, the Circus and Allied Arts Collection includes photographs, circus posters, programs, route books, correspondence, business records, band scores, videotapes, audiotapes, and realia. Instrumental to the growth of the collection has been the acquisition of leading private groups such as those of Al Dobritch, Walter Scholl, Sverre O. Braathen, Jo Van Doveren, Charles H. Tinney, Dave and Mary Jane Price, Frank Ball, Jack Atkinson, Denny Watson, Henry Ringling North, Herbert Ueckert and others. Also, Milner hosts the Circus Route Book site that was a collaborative effort of Circus World, Milner and The Ringling, https://library.illinoisstate.edu/collections/circus-route-books/
Indiana
Indiana Historical Society
The collection documents the circuses that called Indiana home, such as the Great Wallace Shows, the American Circus Corporation, Gentry Brothers Famous Shows, and Cole Bros.
Indiana University Archives
Charles W. Cushman Photographic Collection
Charles Weever Cushman was an amateur photographer, and Indiana University alumnus, who bequeathed approximately 14,500 Kodachrome color slides to his alma mater. The photographs in this collection bridge a thirty-two-year span from 1938 to 1969, and contains images of circuses, performers, and animals.
International Circus Hall of Fame
Located on the old circus winter quarters in Peru, the collections document the circus in America as well as the historic connection between the circus and Indiana.
Miami County Museum
Miami County was the winter quarters for important circus corporations (1880’s to 1930’s).
Kentucky
Eastern Kentucky University, Special Collections & Archives
The Shropshire Collection includes records of the 4-Paw Hotel and a large variety of circus material from the early to mid-1900s that was donated to the Dorris Museum by Mrs. James Shropshire. When the Dorris Museum closed, the collection was transferred to Special Collections and Archives. The items within the collection include photos of performers and circus snapshots, post cards, circus newspapers, programs, and newspaper clippings, as well as lifetime circus passes and tickets.
Massachusetts
Founded in1812, the Society’s General Catalo provides access to their collection of books, pamphlets, manuscripts, newspapers, lithographs, and broadsides that date to 1876, as well as secondary source material.
Harvard, Houghton Library
Founded in 1901, the Harvard Theatre Collection stands as one of the oldest and largest performing arts collections in the world. The collection documents the history of the performing arts, especially theatre, dance, opera, musical theatre, and popular entertainments such as circuses, pantomime, puppetry, American minstrelsy, music, and fairs and pleasure gardens.
Massachusetts Collections Online, Digital Commonwealth
Leslie Jones Collection – Boston Public Library
Modest about his abilities as a photographer (he called himself a cameraman, not a photojournalist), Jones quietly built an unrivaled collection of photographic negatives, almost 40,000 of which were given to the Boston Public Library by his family in the early 1970s. The collection is a stunning pictorial document of the history of Boston in the 20th century, and a tribute to the craft and artistry of a man who, by doing his job, preserved the past on glass and film.
Tufts University
Digital Collections and Archives
Correspondence, manuscripts, inventories, photographs, clippings, and memorabilia documenting aspects of the career of P.T. Barnum, Jumbo and Barnum’s relationship with Tufts University.
The Tufts University ARCHIVE-IT Circus History Collections is a collection of 16 inactive circus history websites and blogs including the CHS Classic Website. This collection features websites focused on the history and cultural significance of the circus, including specific circuses, notable figures in circus history, circus-related organizations, and collections of circus-related materials. Users can search the text pages of all 16 sites simultaneously or individually.
Mississippi
University of Southern Mississippi – McCain Library and Archives
Circus, Minstrel and Traveling Show Collection, Collection Number M329
Collection covers 1894-1953. Barnum and Bailey, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey, Hagenbeck-Wallace, Cole Bros., Barnett Bros., Clyde Beatty, Royal American Shows, also minstrel and traveling shows.
New Jersey
Princeton University, Department of Rare Books and Special Collection, Manuscript Division
McCaddon Collection of the Barnum & Bailey Circus
Collection includes documents and hundreds of photographs documenting the American circus of the 19th and 20th centuries. Correspondence, photographs, scrapbooks, and other material collected by business manager Joseph T. McCaddon prior to the 1907 merger of the circus with Ringling Bros.
New York
New York Public Library, Library for the Performing Arts / Billy Rose Theatre Division
The library’s circus collection–photographs, reviews, posters, broadsides, and programs–contains materials documenting this form as early as the eighteenth century in England. Special periodicals on the subject include Circus Scrap Book (1923-31) and a good file of White Tops (1928-). Other periodicals in the holdings such as Billboard, New York Dramatic Mirror, and Variety contain circus information. Most of this material relates to American circuses, although some English tours are included. Much vital information, particularly for contemporary figures, can be found in their collection of scrapbooks, clippings, and iconography files. Joseph Grimaldi, whose career is documented in the Hiram Stead collection with engravings, includes portraits and playbills. Perhaps the most notable archive consists of seventeen letters on show business from P. T. Barnum to Moses Kimball in the Manuscripts and Archives Division, dated 1846 to 1876. With them are issues of Southern newspapers of 1843 containing articles about Barnum’s exhibition of his “mermaid.”
This collection contains manuscripts, manuscript copies, printed scores, and parts belonging to choreographer, director, dancer, and composer Richard Barstow, whose varied career included directing for Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus, industrial shows, and for stage, screen, and television.
Richard and Edith Barstow Papers
The Richard and Edith Barstow Papers document the careers of the sister and brother, both as dancers, then as choreographers and directors, for stage, screen, television, the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus, nightclubs, and industrial shows.
New York Historical Society Museum & Library
Couriers, heralds, lithographs (posters), photographs.
Long Island University, Post Campus, Archives and Special Collections
Circus and Buffalo Bill Collection
The Circus Collection consists of such a variety of elements as books, magazines, advertising posters and leaflets, photographs, pictorial cards of animals and circus people, and special illustrations.
Somers Historical Society, Somers Circus Collection
The collection contains materials relating to the earliest establishment of the circus and menageries in America in the late 18th century through the early 20th century. It includes artifacts from descendants of local menagerie and circus pioneers, and a large gift collected by Dr Hugh Grant Rowell of photographs, broadsides, posters, and ephemera from the American circus.
Collection contains information on the early circus in Southeast and Brewster, NY. Many showmen and circus people came from Southeast. Nathan Howes and Seth B. Howes began their show business careers at early ages, in Southeast.
Ronald G. Becker Collection of Charles Eisenmann Photographs, 1836 – 1960. The collection contains 1,412 photographs by Eisenmann of sideshow and dime museum performers, as well as other sideshow images and memorabilia. The finding aid contains an inventory of the images in the collection.
Ohio
Cincinnati Art Museum, Print Collection
The Strobridge Collection at the Cincinnati Art Museum is based upon four display albums from the company from the early 1880s that were donated to the Cincinnati Art Museum by the Strobridge Company.
Cincinnati Museum Center, Cincinnati History Library and Archives
Collection contains information about the Strobridge Lithographing Company and the business records of the John Robinson Circus Company and related shows and manuscript collections. Finding aids are available online
Cincinnati Public Library, Special Collections
The Langstroth Collection contains over 1,000 original lithographs mounted on large poster boards, collected by Theodore A. Langstroth, a local businessman and avid student of Cincinnati prints and printmaking techniques. The Strobridge Lithographing Company posters are also part of the library’s collection.
Miami University, Oxford, OH, Anthropology Museum, Bradmiller Circus Resource Center
Brandmiller Circus Collection
Donated by the Brandmiller Family in memory of Herman and Elsie Brandmiller, lifetime circus fans.
Ohio Memory is the collaborative statewide digital library program of the Ohio History Connection and the State Library of Ohio. On this free website, you can explore digital content from over 390 cultural heritage institutions representing all 88 of Ohio’s counties covering a wide range of topics from prehistory to present day.
Oklahoma
Oklahoma State University Library
The Oklahoma Oral History and Research oral history project aims to preserve the voices associated with occupational culture and tradition of the American “Big Top” circus in the small town of Hugo, Oklahoma, historically referred to as the “Sarasota of the Southwest” and “Circus City USA.”
University of Tulsa, McFarlin Library, Department of Special Collections and University Archives
The Department holds the Joseph T. McCaddon Collection of Buffalo Bill and Pawnee Bill papers, the Gordon W. Lillie Papers, Sverre Braathen Circus Collection, and Dexter Fellow’s Circus Photographs, as well as other circus ephemera and photographs. The McCaddon Collection consists of business correspondence, documents, and photographs relating to the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show. Pawnee Bill’s Old Town and Great Far East Show with correspondence from Fred Hutchinson. Stewart, A. A. Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, and Pawnee Bill’s Great Far East Show.
Pennsylvania
The Theatre Collection of the Free Library of Philadelphia is a research collection of materials on theatre and other forms of entertainment with a special focus on Philadelphia and Pennsylvania. It contains well over a million items, not only about theatre, but also about film, television, radio, the circus, minstrels, vaudeville, and burlesque. In addition to traditional books and magazines, myriad types of archival material are represented, including programs, playbills, theatrical scrapbooks, posters, lithographs, newspaper clippings, lobby cards, reviews, pictures of productions and film stills.
Texas
Houston Library, Houston Metropolitan Research Center
Heiser-Alban Collection of Circus Historical Materials
Collection contains periodicals, clippings, correspondence, photographs, posters, and other memorabilia relating to the circus from the collection of Joseph Matthew Heiser, Jr. The collection documents the circus mainly through its advertising material. It contains over 800 posters from the 1890s to the present, as well as several hundred date sheets, most from Texas performers and specifically the Houston region. The collection also contains brochures, handbills, window cards, programs, and an extensive collection of newspaper clippings.
University of Texas at Austin, Harry Ransom Center
Circus Collection, with the Joe E. Ward Collection and W. H. Crain Barnum & Bailey Circus Collection
The Circus Collection consists of materials assembled from other Performing Arts collections. It is divided into six series: I. American Circuses, II. Foreign Circuses, III. P. T. Barnum, IV. Dime Museums, V. Wild West Productions, and VI. Posters and Playbills. The bulk of the collection dates from the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century.
Norman Bel Geddes (1893-1958), a pioneer in stage design, was involved as writer and/or designer in more than one hundred plays, motion pictures, and other theatrical performances ranging from the opera to the circus.
Hertzberg Circus Collection is now located at the Witte Museum The collection now has over 40,000 artifacts. The best source for information about the collection is the booklet, The Inner and Outer Worlds of the Circus: Guide to the Hertzberg Circus Collection (1982). The collections was established by Harry Hertzberg (1884-1940), a San Antonio lawyer, civic leader, and state senator. Hertzberg was a circus fan who accumulated American circus and related popular-culture memorabilia. His purpose in collecting circus memorabilia was to preserve a record of the history and contributions of the circus to American culture and society.
Vermont
Shelburne Museum
Besides two hand carved circus models, the Shelburne Museum also has more than 500 circus posters dating from the 1830s to the 1960s. The imaginative, brightly colored posters advertise Barnum and Bailey, Ringling Brothers, and other major shows. Another highlight of the circus collections is a remarkable archive of photo negatives by Elliot Fenander. Taken in the late 1960s, these photographs document the circus during a period of decline in a culturally turbulent era.
Utah
Brigham Young University, Harold B. Lee Library
Personal and business papers generated by DeMille (1881-1959), his family, and his motion picture and other activities from 1863 to 1983 including correspondence, audio and videotape recordings, financial ledgers, and memorabilia. Also, with the collection are more than 6,500 pieces of production-related artwork, more than 37,869 film still photographs, 275 volumes of scrapbooks (1919-1962), sound recordings, and video tapes of 36 motion pictures from DeMille’s personal film collection.
Wisconsin
Circus World Museum, Robert L. Parkinson Library & Research Center
Circus World’s Robert L. Parkinson Library and Research Center is the world’s foremost research facility for circus history. The holdings document the history of the American circus from its inception in 1793 to the present day. It contains a huge collection containing rare photographs, posters, manuscripts, and artifacts. With information on some 2,800 American circuses, and a reference file of over 300,000 names of circus performers and employees, it is a prime source of information for enthusiasts and scholars of the circus from all over the world. Selected personal papers and corporate records, including business records of the Gollmar Bros. Circus, and drawings and ledgers from the wagon builders Moeller & Sons, are available for study.
International Clown Hall of Fame and Research Center
The International Clown Hall of Fame is dedicated to preserving the history and artistry of clowning. The collection contains photographs, costumes, props, and artifacts that document the history of clowning.
Sauk County Historical Society
The Sauk County History Center houses the largest collection of archival material related to Sauk County including surname files for over 3,000 Sauk County families along with many published family histories
Wyoming
Buffalo Bill Center of the West
Numbering some 9,300 items, the collection of the Buffalo Bill Museum richly documents not only the life and times of William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody and the history and operations of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, but also the lived experiences of settlers, ranchers, farmers, cowboys, and other people in the interior West. Items range in size from very small—such as buttons, jewelry, and thimbles—to very large, such as wagons and stagecoaches and, largest of all, the “Boyhood Home” of William F. Cody, which the museum acquired in the 1930s.
University of Wyoming
The Entertainment Industry collections at the American Heritage Center focus on the twentieth century. During the twentieth century, entertainment in the United States changed radically due to advances in communications technology. The collection includes the Tim McCoy Papers.
Global Circus and Allied Arts Collections
CARP: Circus Arts Research Platform
An international listing of museums, archives, libraries, and resource centers with circus collections.
CircusTalk: Uniting and Connecting circus professionals
Rejoice in the Circus Libraries of the World
The circus libraries that do exist are often a repository for archives donated from around the world, and a rare treasure for those who seek to understand, interact with, or document the art form of the circus.
Fédération Mondiale du Cirque
Fédération Mondiale du Cirque has developed and maintains a list of libraries, museums and archives holding Circus collections as well as a research database.