BARNUM, PHINEAS T.

(1810-1891), showman, impresario, and author. Barnum, who was born poor of Yankee stock in rural Connecticut, grew up with a burning desire to make good. After various false starts in speculative business ventures, his career prospered when he took over the tour of a former slave, Joice Heth, who claimed to be more than 160 years old and to have been George Washington's nurse. Barnum's gift for publicity enabled him to make profits where others had failed, and as Joice Heth's manager he hit on the technique of encouraging disbelief as well as credulity. A temperance advocate, the only liquid that he enthusiastically purchased was printer's ink, for he was an early master of incessant and ingenious advertising.

After the Joice Heth affair, and a few setbacks in his career, Barnum toured the United States in the 1840s and 1850s with a series of fabled show business attractions, from the amiable midget Tom Thumb to the Swedish soprano Jenny Lind. He also opened the most successful private museum of curiosities in the country, after purchasing two rival institutions. There, on Broadway in New York City, Barnum's American Museum drew thousands annually to see its fossils, specimens, historical relics, what were then called "freaks of nature," and performances in the "lecture room." Barnum proved just as adept at gauging popular taste in western Europe; he brought his attractions to Britain and the Continent, exploiting royal favor as he had glorified democratic opinion.

Making, then losing, then making again a fortune, Barnum also dabbled in business, in lecturing, in real estate (both in Bridgeport, where he lived, and in the Far West), in politics (he was an abolitionist, a Republican, and an unsuccessful candidate for Congress), and in literature. His books included Humbugs of the World and a much amended autobiography, expanded annually after he brought out his first edition in mid-career, as well as various other texts that he hawked as part of his entertainments.

In the early 1870s, already famous and wealthy, Barnum became involved with circus management. Within a few years he was running the "Greatest Show on Earth," perfecting, with the help of his younger partner, James A. Bailey, the three-ring, touring railroad circus. He continued to seek out and purchase extraordinarily popular attractions, ranging from the elephant Jumbo, the great attraction of the London Zoo that Barnum imported over the protests of Queen Victoria, to the notorious "White Elephant" of Siam.

At his death Barnum could claim to be one of the most celebrated living Americans, a pioneer in the creation of mass amusements, who not only had revolutionized their presentation and publicity but had also produced a philosophy of life to justify them. Moralizer and moralist both, Barnum laid claim to delivering his compatriots from the "thrall" of puritanism and in so doing became a cultural hero of the first importance. His posthumous fame, however, rested largely on the immense popularity of his circus enterprise.

Neil Harris, Humbug: The Art of P. T. Barnum (1973; reprint, 1989); A. H. Saxon, P. T. Barnum: The Legend and the Man (1989).

Neil Harris

See also World's Fairs.