A few months ago I wrote an article for the Sheffield Jungle, a research project run by the National Fairground Archive at the University of Sheffield. The Jungle was a travelling menagerie run by a showman called Frank Bostock that stayed in Sheffield from 1910-1911 and returned in later years. The project gives an interdisciplinary look at the menagerie and its cultural and physical legacies. It's worth taking a gander at the website, which holds a variety of tales (including a wealthy manufacturer taking home a lion cub to his family of five young children!). The project will run until 2013 and involves weekly updates from local newspaper articles of the time.
My own contribution discusses Bostock's use of Darwinism in the showground and the grim truth behind animal exhibits.
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