Documents 

The Routledge Circus Studies Reader offers an absorbing critical introduction to this diverse and emerging field. It brings together the work of over 30 scholars in this discipline, including Janet Davis, Helen Stoddart and Peta Tait, to highlight and address the field’s key historical, critical and theoretical issues. It is organised into three accessible sections, Perspectives, Precedents and Presents, which approach historical aspects, current issues, and the future of circus performance.

The chapters, grouped together into 13 theme-based sub-sections, provide a clear entry point into the field and emphasise the diversity of approaches available to students and scholars of circus studies. Classic accounts of performance, including pieces by Philippe Petit and Friedrich Nietzsche, are included alongside more recent scholarship in the field.

Edited by two scholars whose work is strongly connected to the dynamic world of performance, The Routledge Circus Studies Reader is an essential teaching and study resource for the emerging discipline of circus studies. It also provides a stimulating introduction to the field for lovers of circus. [editor summary]

Circus: The Australian Story is a large format book, soft cover, in full colour. This book represents the culmination of some four decades of research into an area of modern Australia’s history, previously uncharted.

In nearly 300 pages and accompanied by as many images, Circus: The Australian Story traces the history of the circus in Australia from its ancient, medieval and London roots, to the first exhibitions in the colonies in the 1830s and 40s and through its subsequent growth, decline and recent renaissance.

The book gives considerable attention to the rich exchange of circus between Australia and the USA, Japan and other countries. It identifies Australia’s great contributions to the international annals of the circus.

A closing chapter surveys the emergence of a contemporary circus industry and the establishment of federally-funded National Institute of Circus Arts. [editor summary]