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Goodrich & Thode’s Company…Mr. E. T. Goodrich in his Idyl of American Life…Grizzly Adams.
[United States]: [publisher not identified], 1880s. Illustrated circular, 9.125” x 5.875”. 4 pp. CONDITION: Very good. A scarce circular advertising the “very best of border dramas”—based on the life of famed mountain man John Adams. Born in Medway, Massachusetts, “Grizzly Adams” (also known as James Capen Adams 1812–1860) spent his young adulthood capturing wild animals in New England for shows, but was forced to returned to Boston after an injury. In 1849 he ventured to California where, following a few failed years of mining and ranching, he sallied forth into the Sierra Nevada, grew a beard, and captured a young female grizzly he named Lady Washington. A few bears later and he opened a museum in San Francisco, where he became known as the “Barnum of the Pacific.” Additional losses—and looming ill health—prompted him to return east, where he joined the real P. T. Barnum. By the time of his rather gruesome death (from a frequently re-opened hole in his skull caused by an early wrestling match with a grizzly bear and—rumor had it—finally infected by a monkey bite to the brain during his tenure with Barnum) Adams had managed to earn enough to provide comfortably for his wife, and had become an almost mythical figure. This circular, stamped in red by the 8th Street Theatre in Philadelphia, advertises the performance of “a realistic Border Drama…founded upon the early life and adventures” of Grizzly Adams. The synopsis, however, suggests a pastiche of western themes and minstrelsy. The woodcut on the last page shows a raucous fight scene of cowboys, Indians, U.S. troops, and western pioneers with African American servants. A full-page patent medicine ad on page two outlines the advantages of “Merchant’s Gargling Oil—A liniment for Man and Beast.” OCLC records six copies, at the California State Library, UC Berkeley, Harvard University, Southern Methodist University, Yale, and the Library Company of Philadelphia.
Item #8756
Price: $250.00
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