Mass entertainment of many kinds flourished. Circuses were popular. P.T. Barnum's freak show made its debut in 1837; his American Museum was opened in 1842. People in small towns as well as in cities enjoyed various types of musical performances and theatrical productions, including burlesques and tableaux vivants (posed stage presentations of static scenes by costumed participants). Blacks and Native Americans were portrayed on stage: The African Company (the first black acting group) began to present plays in New York in 1821; white actors began to play black roles in blackface; and numerous plays about Indians were written and portrayed in the years leading up to the Civil War. Journalists celebrated folk heroes like Davy Crockett. The availability of popular novels increased through advances in the technology of printing and bookmaking and in distribution and marketing. Prints like those of Currier and Ives circulated widely. Newspapers, magazines, and illustrated weeklies like Frank Leslie's Illustrated and Harper's Weekly had large readerships. As the country grew and as transportation and communication improved, a market existed for works that promoted the standardization of language and of a body of shared knowledge. Noah Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language was first published in 1828. The Encyclopedia Americana appeared between 1829 and 1833. McGuffey's Eclectic Readers began to appear in 1836. Baseball started to take its place as a national preoccupation. Phrenology — the study of the size and shape of the skull as a measure of character and intellect — drew popular attention in the United States in the 1820s and 1830s. Spiritualism drew similar attention in the 1850s.
Of all the manifestations of popular culture during this period, the New England Transcendentalists were most closely and actively associated with the lyceum. Emerson, Thoreau, Theodore Parker, Jones Very, Frederic Henry Hedge, James Freeman Clarke, and others among them were lyceum speakers. Emerson and Thoreau were speakers at the Concord Lyceum (formed in 1828). Emerson was its most frequent speaker, and Thoreau served as its secretary. The lyceum was a powerful medium for disseminating knowledge and ideas and was important in communicating Transcendental philosophy to parts of the country outside New England.
