[BARTHOLOMEW FAIR] THREE SCRAPBOOKS CHRONICLING BARTHOLOMEW FAIR AND ITS POPULAR ENTERTAINMENTS.
Three large quarto scrapbooks in pebbled cloth over gilt-lettered leather spines (disbound), compiled in the nineteenth century by a noted collector of London-related ephemera, one Mr. Gardner, and comprising approximately 400 or more large pages of manuscript notes, printed broadsides, engraved portraits, extracts from books, news clippings, and related memorabilia chronicling the famous summer celebration held for over seven hundred years, London’s Bartholomew Fair.
The books contain hundreds of mounted holographic notes, letters, and related information culled from contemporary accounts regarding the Fair and the performers, presenters, and even the thieves working at the event, along with printed extracts reproducing some of the same text, likely produced by a jobbing printer (though one printed slip bears the stamp of the private press of Charles Clark of Totham, Essex).
In addition, countless mounted cuttings from the eighteenth and nineteenth century fill the pages, together with approximately 100 engravings, half of which depict freaks, entertainers, and curious characters. Complementing this illustrative material are a quantity of printed handbills, small broadsides, and other desiderata related to the same subjects: giants and dwarfs, menageries and other incredible animals, and related amazing spectacles.
Among the characters pictured and profiled are pickpockets, a “tall fat woman”, the rope dancers Barnes and Finely, a six-year-old girl dancing with two “naked rapiers” at her throat (and other odd dances), Haddock’s androides (automatons), camels exhibited at Manchester ca. 1700, various stone eaters and an “eater of corrosive sublimate,” fireworks exhibits (account dated 1788), performances on musical glasses, phantasmagoria, O’Brien the Irish giant (including a hand-colored full-length engraving), Mrs. Morral the armless paper cutter, “The Many Horned Heifer, Exhibited 1809” and a sheep with a giant horn growing from its throat, optical illusions, demonstrations of electricity and its marvelous properties, “the amazing pig of knowledge,” the famous Italian Female Samson, an account of the “evils of the play house,” strongman William Joy, Anne Rouse the dwarf, Fantocini (including handwritten accounts), Simon Paap the dwarf (engraved portrait), a ticket of admission to “Embryo Lectures,” a mare with seven legs named “Pincushion Jenny,” Powell the fire eater, Seurat the Living Skeleton (including one uncommon engraved portrait of Seurat nude but for a fig leaf, and a lengthy account of his exhibition and life history), De Manfre the Water Spouter (including handsome engraved portrait with full margins), Old Harry and his Raree Show (hand-colored portrait), and profiles and portraits or accounts (either printed or handwritten) of many, many more unusual individuals, animals, and performers. Many conjurers are represented in the scrapbooks, among them Frikell, The Wizard Jacobs, John Henry Anderson, Isaac Fawkes and his son (including illustrated advertisements for Fawkes’ booth at the Fair), Flockton (including handwritten accounts), and Matthew Buchinger (represented by both a printed account and an uncommon engraved portrait of the celebrated “little man of Nuremburg”).
The scrapbooks also include lengthy descriptions of the layout, overseeing, and implementation of the Fair, with various handwritten accounts complemented by engraved plans of the fair, the priory of St. Bartholomew, and other views of the London streets where the event took place. Tipped-in or laid in are several publications regarding laws surrounding the fair, an eighteenth century loan document made out to “Bartholomew Fair,” and a lengthy “ode” on the fair published in chapbook form by the Mayor of London.
Condition varies from very good to fair, and while the books are disbound, the contents, both loose and mounted are generally intact, legible, and well-kept. Sold together with Ricky Jay’s holographic notes on the contents of the books, and with his penciled marginalia scattered throughout the volumes describing the importance of the various clippings and bills, and brief typed summation of the contents, both outlining the information related to unusual entertainers, magicians, and curious characters from this storied annual festival that was a significant part of British social and popular entertainment history from 1133 to 1855.
Established by a charter granted by King Henry I in 1133, in the centuries that followed, Bartholomew Fair grew from an event developed by cloth merchants into a cultural phenomenon. As the Fair grew and changed, so did its purpose, eventually transforming into a pleasure fair where every type of Londoner, from the aristocrat to the day laborer could take in spectacles, drink wine, and carouse in an unbridled manner. The Fair eventually became London’s most important, and as such has been chronicled both in the diaries of Pepys, as well as the plays of Ben Jonson and the books of Daniel Defoe and William Wordsworth. After centuries of popularity, the Fair was finally banned in 1855 due to the public disturbances it caused, thanks to the pickpockets, gamblers, and other ne’er-do-wells that preyed on fairgoers. As recorded in Knapp and Baldwin’s Newgate Calendar (1825), the Fair had devolved into a “school of vice which has initiated more youth into the habits of villainy than Newgate [prison] itself.”