This entertaining account of Buffalo Bill's tours of Britain is richly illustrated, with many previously unpublished photographs, cartoons, and posters.

Army scout, frontiersman, and hero of the American West, William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody was also a shrewd self-promoter, showman, and entrepreneur. In 1888 he published The Story of the Wild West, a collection of biographies of four well-known American frontier figures: Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, Kit Carson, and himself. Cody contributed an abridged version of his 1879 autobiography with an addendum titled The Wild West in England, now available in this stand-alone annotated edition, including all the illustrations from the original text along with photographs of Cody and promotional materials. Here Cody describes his Wild West exhibition, the show that offered audiences a mythic experience of the American frontier. Focusing on the show’s first season of performances in England, Cody includes excerpts of numerous laudatory descriptions of his show from the English press as well as stories of his time spent with British nobility—from private performances for Queen Victoria and the Prince and Princess of Wales to dinners and teas with the elite of London society. He depicts himself as an ambassador of American culture, proclaiming that he and his Wild West show prompted the British to “know more of the mighty nation beyond the Atlantic and . . . to esteem us better than at any time within the limits of modern history.”

The story of how William F. Cody, army scout, Indian fighter, stagecoach driver and buffalo hunter, became an acting sensation with his Wild West show, playing to millions of people in America and Europe for over 30 years. This account highlights the tours of Victorian and Edwardian Britain. Includes details of the many towns and villages visited by Buffalo Bill and how the residents reacted to this incredible spectacular. This entertaining account of Buffalo Bill's tours of Britain is richly illustrated, with many previously unpublished photographs, cartoons, and posters.

William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody was the entertainment industry's first international celebrity, achieving worldwide stardom with his traveling Wild West show. For three decades he operated and appeared in various incarnations of "the western world's greatest traveling attraction," enthralling audiences around the globe. When the show reached Europe it was a sensation, igniting "Wild West fever" by offering what purported to be a genuine experience of the American frontier.

William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody was the most famous American of his age. He claimed to have worked for the Pony Express when only a boy and to have scouted for General George Custer. But what was his real story? And how did a frontiersman become a worldwide celebrity? In this prize-winning biography, acclaimed author Louis S. Warren explains not only how Cody exaggerated his real experience as an army scout and buffalo hunter, but also how that experience inspired him to create the gigantic, traveling spectacle known as Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. A dazzling mix of Indians, cowboys, and vaqueros, they performed on two continents for three decades, offering a surprisingly modern view of the United States and a remarkably democratic version of its history. This definitive biography reveals the genius of America’s greatest showman, and the startling history of the American West that drove him and his performers to the world stage.

"In Hostiles? Sam A. Maddra relates an ironic tale of Indian accommodation - and preservation of what the Lakota continued to believe was a principled, restorative religion. Their alleged crime was their participation in the Ghost Dance. To the U.S. Army, their religion was a rebellion to be suppressed. To the Indians, is offered hope in a time of great transition. To Cody, it became a means to attract British audiences. With these "hostile indians," the showman could offer dramatic reenactments of the army's conquest, starring none other than the very "hostiles" who had staged what British audiences knew from their newspapers to have been an uprising.".

Beautiful full color litho cover, stagecoach under attack from Indians, cameo portrait of W.F. Cody.

When it comes to the production and distribution of mass culture, no country in modern times has come close to rivaling the success of America. From blue jeans in central Europe to Elvis Presley's face on a Republic of Chad postage stamp, the reach of American mass culture extends into every corner of the globe. Most believe this is a twentieth-century phenomenon, but here Robert W. Rydell and Rob Kroes prove that its roots are far deeper. Buffalo Bill in Bologna reveals that the process of globalizing American mass culture began as early as the mid-nineteenth century. In fact, by the end of World War I, the United States already boasted an advanced network of culture industries that served to promote American values. Rydell and Kroes narrate how the circuses, amusement parks, vaudeville, mail-order catalogs, dime novels, and movies developed after the Civil War—tools central to hastening the reconstruction of the country—actually doubled as agents of American cultural diplomacy abroad. As symbols of America's version of the "good life," cultural products became a primary means for people around the world, especially in Europe, to reimagine both America and themselves in the context of America's growing global sphere of influence. Paying special attention to the role of the world's fairs, the exporting of Buffalo Bill's Wild West show to Europe, the release of The Birth of a Nation, and Woodrow Wilson's creation of the Committee on Public Information, Rydell and Kroes offer an absorbing tour through America's cultural expansion at the turn of the century. Buffalo Bill in Bologna is thus a tour de force that recasts what has been popularly understood about this period of American and global history.