The Evanion Collection

While surfing the net today I ran across an interesting blog called “Morbid Anatomy – Surveying the Interstices of Art and Medicine, Death and Culture“. I’ve not investigated the site fully, but what caught my eye was a reference to The Evanion Collection.

In 1895 the British Museum purchased a rich and fascinating collection of 19th century ephemera formed by Henry Evans (1832-1905), a conjuror and ventriloquist, who performed under the stage name “Evanion”. During the course of a long career, he took every opportunity to amass a large collection of material relating to Victorian entertainment and everyday life. Harry Houdini, who described the collection as “full of priceless treasures”, later acquired many of the items relating to magic. These are now in the possession of the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin. The British Library owns approximately 5,000 items from Evanion’s collection. These fall into two main categories – popular entertainment, and everyday life – and include posters, advertisements, trade cards and catalogues.

As the paragraph says, the collection is currently at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas which is in Austin.

There are many many pieces of Evanion Ephemera viewable on a LiveJournal blog located here. I’ve only included a few in this article.  Take a look at them all by clicking the above link.

The Morbid Anatomy blog is part of the Proteus Gowanus Interdisciplinary Gallery and Reading Room in Brooklyn, New York. The Library houses the ever-growing collection of books, catalogs, photographs, articles and artifacts used as source material for the ongoing Morbid Anatomy study.  Sounds interesting.. but clearly nothing I know anything about… nor intend to delve into anytime soon.

I’m Tom Murphy and thanks for helping me give Ephemera the encore it deserves.

Tom
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