Black circus performers in Victorian Britain

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe role and importance of Black British artists in the nineteenth-century British circus have yet to be fully explored. By contextualising and bringing together key biographies and material on People of Colour who operated in travelling circuses a wider examination of their contrasting fortunes and experiences can be discussed. The British and American circus tradition traversed different but overlapping histories and should not be seen as one economic and societal concept. The experiences of Black performers in the United Kingdom and Europe were markedly different to those operating in the United States; this research seeks to understand the complex societal changes and contexts that operated on both sides of the Atlantic that influenced the performance context in which African-Americans and Black British performers and those of African descent experienced and aspired to be successful.