ABSTRACT
Phineas T. Barnum (1810-1891) shocked Europeans with the Yankee chicanery and “go ahead” spirit of his Life o f P. T. Barnum (New York, 1855), revised into Struggles and Triumphs; or; Forty Years' Recollections o f P. T. Barnum in 1866 and periodically updated and republished until Barnum’s death. The 1871 edition is the source of the items reprinted here. Apotheosis of the Yankee sharper in the new industrial world, Barnum, as myth, claims principles subservient to money-getting. However, his uncompromising stands on human rights and temperance won him many friends among conservatives in Amer ica. In addition to the excerpts from his autobiography, which illus trate Barnum’s moral and social position, two stories about him from Yankee Notions, I (1852), are included to give an indication of the hu mor generated by Barnum as a figure-a figure that gave Artemus Ward his character in the hands of Charles F. Browne and so interested Mark Twain that Barnum’s traits appear in many of Twain’s heroshowmen such as Hank Morgan in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889).
