Stuart Thayer
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Stuart Thayer is a renowned historian of the American circus.
Born in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1926, Thayer served in World War II after which he graduated with a degree in literature from the University of Michigan. He then took a job at his father's insurance agency where he worked until his late 40s, after which he retired to devote the remainder of his life to documenting the history of the American circus. He began writing articles on circus history in Bandwagon, the journal of the Circus Historical Society, in the late 1960s, one a piece on Ringling cages co-authored by Richard Conover, then the leading student of American field shows.
His first major work was Mudshows and Railers, an account of the 1879 circus season based mainly on a close reading of the New York Clipper, the industry's trade paper, and metropolitan dailies. The first of his three pathbreaking books on the history of the American Circus before 1860, Annals of the American Circus, came out in 1976. It was the first extensively researched, comprehensive account of the ante-bellum American circus, obsoleting virtually all previous secondary work on the subject. He later co-authored books with fellow historians Fred Dahlinger and William Slout, and continued to publish in Bandwagon. Traveling Showmen, his masterpiece, was published in 1997. The distillation of his thirty years of research, the book analyzed the economic and operational aspects of pre-Civil War circuses. A companion volume on the performance and performers appeared in 2006. He is currently working on a biography of Adam Forepaugh, the late 19th century circus manager.
Thayer currently lives in Seattle with his wife Boyka.
