[CIRCUS HISTORY] Wild Australian Children

A$475 · Offered by Douglas Stewart Fine Books

Buffalo ; New York : Warren Johnson Co., circa 1864. Promotional card with colour lithograph design, after a photograph by Charles D. Fredricks, carte de visite format (102 x 67 mm), printed caption and publisher s imprint in lower margin, verso blank; in good condition, a little darkened and with a small amount of pale foxing. A portrait of two microencephalic sideshow freaks , whose physical appearance led them to be referred to at the time by promoters and commentators as pinheads . The children were billed as Hoomio and Iola, who had purportedly been found in the interior of Australia. An anonymous contemporary promotional pamphlet, which gives a fictitious account of their background, is recorded in several Australian collections ( The Adventures of the three Australian travellers : Capt. J. Reid and his companions Cooper and Parker, in search of the marvelous : giving a graphic account of the discovery, capture and semi-civilization of the wild Australian children, Hoomio and Iola : together with a sketch of the savage tribes inhabiting the interior of Australia : with a brief account of the customs, manners, heathen beliefs, superstitions, traditions and origin of those barbarous and curious islanders . New York : S. Booth, 1864). Hoomio and Iola are known to have been exhibited by promoters from around 1864 to at least 1869. They represented an opportunity for promoters to exploit the controversy surrounding the Darwinian theory of evolution, and were shamelessly port

• Binding: Hardcover

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