Circus Poster, Barnum and Bailey Circus Presents "The Marvelous Zedoras and Alar the Human Arrow," 1896

In the late nineteenth century, printers developed a lithograph method that produced brightly colored posters. In advance of a circus coming to town, general agents glued these eye-catching generic posters to building walls, fences, and in window displays. To announce when and where the performances would happen, local printers sometimes provided letterpress paper date strips to paste onto the posters' lower margin.