The Popular Frontier Volume 4: Buffalo Bill's Wild West and Transnational Mass Culture (William F. Cody Series on the History and Culture of the American West)

When William F. Cody introduced his Wild West exhibition to European audiences in 1887, the show soared to new heights of popularity and success.With its colorful portrayal of cowboys, Indians, and the taming of the North American frontier, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West popularized a myth of American national identity and shaped European perceptions of the United States.The Popular Frontier is the first collection of essays to explore the transnational impact and mass-cultural appeal of Cody’s Wild West. As editor Frank Christianson explains in his introduction, for the first four years after Cody conceived it, the Wild West exhibition toured the United States, honing the operation into a financially solvent enterprise.When the troupe ventured to England for its first overseas booking, its success exceeded all expectations.Between 1887 and 1906 the Wild West performed in fourteen countries, traveled more than 200,000 miles, and attracted a collective audience in the tens of millions. How di