From Prairie to Palace: Buffalo Bill's Wild West in Europe

FAIN: RQ-249753-16

Buffalo Bill Historical Center (Cody, WY 82414-3428)
Mary Robinson (Project Director: December 2015 to July 2017)
Jeremy M. Johnston (Project Director: July 2017 to December 2021)

Preparation for publication of materials related to the tours of Spain and Italy by Buffalo Bill's Wild West show in 1887-1906. See website at http://www.codyarchive.org.

The Papers of William F. Cody (The Papers) at Buffalo Bill Center of the West collects, edits, and publishes material from the period of William F. Cody's birth to well beyond his death, in print and in an online, open-access, digital edition. The material is published on The William F. Cody Archive and is available at no cost to an international audience of all interest levels. This project will expand the digital scholarly edition to include material associated with Buffalo Bill's Wild West in Spain, Italy, Scotland, and Wales. The Papers staff will organize the materials around the transition of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West from its original incarnation as a frontier exhibition to the cosmopolitan pageant that would be its hallmark on both continents until the European tour closed in 1906.

Associated Products

Pioneers of Promotion: How Press Agents for Buffalo Bill, P.T. Barnum, and the World's Columbian Exposition Created Modern Marketing (Book)
Title: Pioneers of Promotion: How Press Agents for Buffalo Bill, P.T. Barnum, and the World's Columbian Exposition Created Modern Marketing
Author: Joe Dobrow
Abstract: In Pioneers of Promotion, writer Joe Dobrow introduces us to the “Mad Men” of the 19th Century. Dobrow turns back the clock to the Gilded Age, when the railroad was just opening up the West, Buffalo Bill was better known than the President of the United States, P.T. Barnum was so famous for his promotions that people commonly spoke of them as “Barnumisms,” a country of 67 million people could host a World’s Fair that attracted 27 million visitors, and the development of a consumer culture paved the way for branded products that quickly became household names. Without a playbook, without any broadcast technology to reach the masses, without any efficient means for disseminating information and images, this little-known group of men somehow developed the marketing techniques we still employ today.
Year: 2018
Primary URL: https://www.worldcat.org/title/pioneers-of-promotion-how-press-agents-for-buffalo-bill-p-t-barnum-and-the-worlds-columbian-exposition-created-modern-marketing/oclc/1082399373?referer=br&ht=edition
Primary URL Description: WorldCat listing
Secondary URL: https://www.oupress.com/books/14989656/pioneers-of-promotion
Secondary URL Description: Publisher's listing
Access Model: Book
Publisher: Norman: University of Oklahoma Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780806160108
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

America's Best Female Sharpshooter: The Rise and Fall of Lillian Frances Smith (Book)
Title: America's Best Female Sharpshooter: The Rise and Fall of Lillian Frances Smith
Author: Julia Bricklin
Abstract: Chronicles the fifty-year career of "California Girl" Lillian Frances Smith and explores the sharpshooting talents that made her a star in Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West show.
Year: 2017
Primary URL: https://www.worldcat.org/title/americas-best-female-sharpshooter-the-rise-and-fall-of-lillian-frances-smith/oclc/959373176&referer=brief_results
Primary URL Description: WorldCat listing
Secondary URL: https://www.oupress.com/books/14643558/americas-best-female-sharpshooter
Secondary URL Description: Publisher's listing
Access Model: Book
Publisher: Norman: University of Oklahoma Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780806156330
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

Prizes

Willa Literary Awards, Scholarly Nonfiction, Winners and Finalists
Date: 1/1/2018
Organization: Women Writing the West
Abstract: The award is named in honor of Pulitzer Prize winner Willa Cather, and awarded annually for outstanding literature featuring womens stories set in the West.

The Popular Frontier: Buffalo Bill's Wild West and Transnational Mass Culture (Book)
Title: The Popular Frontier: Buffalo Bill's Wild West and Transnational Mass Culture
Editor: Frank Christianson
Abstract: When William F. Cody introduced his Wild West exhibition to European audiences in 1887, the show soared to new heights of popularity and success. With its colorful portrayal of cowboys, Indians, and the taming of the North American frontier, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West popularized a myth of American national identity and shaped European perceptions of the United States. The Popular Frontier is the first collection of essays to explore the transnational impact and mass-cultural appeal of Cody’s Wild West.
Year: 2017
Primary URL: https://www.worldcat.org/title/popular-frontier-buffalo-bills-wild-west-and-transnational-mass-culture/oclc/1088510613&referer=brief_results
Primary URL Description: WorldCat listing
Secondary URL: https://www.oupress.com/books/14759667/the-popular-frontier
Secondary URL Description: Publisher's listing
Access Model: Book
Publisher: Norman: University of Oklahoma Press
Type: Edited Volume
ISBN: 9780806158945
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

Prizes

Ray & Pat Browne Award for Best Edited Collection
Date: 1/1/2018
Organization: American Popular Culture Association
Abstract: Each year, the PCA recognizes achievements in research, writing, and service to our profession.

Art and Advertising in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West (Book)
Title: Art and Advertising in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West
Author: • Michelle Delaney
Abstract: William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody, star of the American West, began his journey to fame at age twenty-three, when he met writer Ned Buntline. The pulp novels Buntline later penned were loosely based on Cody’s scouting and bison-hunting adventures and sparked a national sensation. Other writers picked up the living legend of “Buffalo Bill” for their own pulp novels, and in 1872 Buntline produced a theatrical show starring Cody himself. In 1883, Cody opened his own show, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, which ultimately became the foundation for the world’s image of the American frontier. After the Civil War, new transcontinental railroads aided rapid westward expansion, fostering Americans’ long-held fascination with their western frontier. The railroads enabled traveling shows to move farther and faster, and improved printing technologies allowed those shows to print in large sizes and quantities lively color posters and advertisements. Cody’s show team partnered with printers, lithographers, photographers, and iconic western American artists, such as Frederic Remington and Charles Schreyvogel, to create posters and advertisements for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West. Circuses and other shows used similar techniques, but Cody’s team perfected them, creating unique posters that branded Buffalo Bill’s Wild West as the true Wild West experience. They helped attract patrons from across the nation and ultimately from around the world at every stop the traveling show made. In Art and Advertising in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, Michelle Delaney showcases these numerous posters in full color, many of which have never before been reproduced, pairing them with new research into previously inaccessible manuscript and photograph collections. Her study also includes Cody’s correspondence with his staff, revealing the showman’s friendships with notable American and European artists and his show’s complex, modern publicity model.
Year: 2019
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 0806164301

William F. Cody Archive (Database/Archive/Digital Edition)
Title: William F. Cody Archive
Author: Jeremy Johnston
Abstract: In 2009, The Papers partnered with Senior Digital Editor Dr. Douglas Seefeldt and Katherine Walter, co-director of the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities (CDRH) at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) to build the William F. Cody Archive (Cody Archive) www.CodyArchive.org, which launched in October 2011. Since that time, Associate Editors from more than 10 institutions have identified, collected, and interpreted historical documents related to William F. Cody, the Wild West exhibition, and its national and international legacy. This collaboration has led to the scanning of more than 40,000 documents and photographs from collections held by the McCracken Research Library in addition to 20,000 more archival documents from online databases and collections across the United States and Europe.
Year: 2011
Primary URL: http://www.codyarchive.org
Primary URL Description: The William F. Cody Archive Documenting the Life and Times of Buffalo Bill
Access Model: Open Access

Cody Studies (Database/Archive/Digital Edition)
Title: Cody Studies
Author: Jeremy Johston
Abstract: CodyStudies is a digital research platform designed to advance digital research and scholarship through a platform integrated with the Cody Archive, and provide an interdisciplinary venue for scholars to publish a new genre of nineteenth-century digital humanities scholarship using material from the Archive.
Year: 2016
Primary URL: http://codystudies.org
Primary URL Description: A Digital Research and Scholarship Platform fostering new work examining the regional, national, and international reach of William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody and his broad impact on an emergent mass culture.
Access Model: Open Access

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