Episode 82: The Thing About Astley's

Come one, come all! Step right up and witness amazing feats on horseback! This episode we're headed to Astley's Amphitheatre where Harriet Smith and Robert Martin are getting nice and cozy. If you have ever found romance at the circus, this is the episode for you.

Illustration of Andrew Ducrow (1793-1842) riding five-in-hand in his famous "The Courier of St. Petersburg" act for Astley's Circus

Selected Sources:

• “9 (Vol. 1) | Reconstructing Early Circus.” Accessed December 14, 2023. https://dhil.lib.sfu.ca/circus/clipping/287.

• Austen, Jane. Selected Letters. Edited by Vivien Jones. Oxford World’s Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

• Booth, Michael R. “Astley’s Amphitheatre.” In The Companion to Theatre and Performance. Oxford University Press, 2010. https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780199574193.001.0001/acref-9780199574193-e-218.

• Burke, Helen. “Jacobin Revolutionary Theatre and the Early Circus: Astley’s Dublin Amphitheatre in the 1790s.” Theatre Research International 31, no. 1 (March 2006): 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0307883305001847.

• Byrne, Paula Jayne. “Jane Austen and the Theatre.” Doctoral Dissertation, University of Liverpool, 2000. https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/3175545/1/DX215839.pdf.

• Frost, Thomas. Circus Life and Circus Celebrities. Tinsley Bros., 1875.

• Hall, Monica. A Visitor’s Guide to Georgian England. Barnsley, South Yorkshire: Pen and Sword, 2017.

• HathiTrust. “Astley’s System of Equestrian Education: Exhibiting the Beauties and Defects of the Horse, with Serious and Important Observations on His General Excellence, ...” Accessed December 7, 2023. https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mmet.ark:/13960/t16m3rz2w?urlappend=%3Bseq=9.

• Kwint, Marius. “Astley, Philip (1742–1814), Equestrian Performer and Circus Proprietor.” In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2004. https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/821.

• Lybeck, Eleanor. All on Show: The Circus in Irish Literature and Culture. Cork, Ireland: Cork university press, 2019.

• Mattfeld, Monica. Becoming Centaur: Eighteenth-Century Masculinity and English Horsemanship. The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2017.

• Victoria and Albert Museum. “The Story of Circus · V&A.” Accessed December 14, 2023. https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/the-story-of-circus.

• Ward, Steve. Father of the Modern Circus “Billy Buttons”: The Life & Times of Philip Astley. Great Britain: Pen & Sword History, 2018.

  

  Illustrations from Costume Parisien, 1807 & 1809.

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