Four Years in Europe with Buffalo Bill

About this Edition

about this edition By the end of his life William F. Cody had become the entertainment industry’s first international celebrity, blazing a trail that was to be followed by others with the advent of mass communication media in the decades after his passing . The vehicle that brought him international stardom was Buffalo Bill’s Wild West. During the three decades that he operated and appeared in various incarnations of “the western world’s greatest travelling attraction,”1 European and American audiences were offered a carefully crafted narrative of the history of geographic expansion in the trans-Mississippi west of the United States that displayed in itself the products of nineteenth- and early twentiethcentury industrial civilization while purporting to represent authentically the savage life of the frontier.2 From its inception in 1883, the show was a reflection of the dominant positivist ideology of progress from savagery to civilization seen through the lens of Cody’s own imagination, with his own constructed persona at the heart of it all. More than any other individual, it was Cody who brought America to the world, crafting out of his own biography, imagination, and ambition an international and intercultural legacy that is still debated by scholars nearly xxviii about this edition one hundred years on. Every year the museums dedicated to his memory—in Cody, Wyoming, Golden, Colorado, and North Platte, Nebraska—attract a steady stream of visitors from throughout the United States and abroad. Given the unquestioned international importance of Cody’s life and works and the enduring interest they continue to engender, it is scarcely credible that the only contemporary book-length commentaries on his Wild West in Europe, which has been referenced by every leading Cody scholar from Don Russell to Warren,3 has only ever appeared in one edition with a single print run of five hundred copies and that it is now only available to specialists in a small number of libraries and archives. And yet, though a century has passed since it first appeared, that is the case for Four Years in Europe with Buffalo Bill. A number of writers, such as Robert Rydell and Rob Kroes, have linked the development of mass-market American cultural products in the late nineteenth century to the origins of American cultural imperialism, arguing that its emergence as a global phenomenon pre-dates the decades between the two world wars that had previously been generally accepted.4 Others scholars, such as Warren, have identified the need for further study of “the show’s meaning for its diverse European audiences.”5 It is in the context of these recent debates that this new edition of Griffin’s memoir is presented: a first-person narrative in straightforward prose that forms part of the documentary record of William F. Cody’s life and career. It sheds light on some of the deepest questions about nationalism, imperialism , and an emerging global mass culture that dominate about this edition xxix contemporary scholarly and public interest by describing and commenting upon some of the key events of the Wild West’s extensive European tours of 1902 to 1906. It is not, however, the intention of this edition to be overly academic, for to do so would be a tremendous disservice to the original. Griffin’s distinctive voice draws his readers in as he addresses them directly in an unselfconscious manner that is at no time dry or scholarly. In producing this authoritative version of his text, complete with the accompanying line drawings and photographs from the princeps, care has been taken to ensure the integrity of the original. Corrections have been made to some aberrant spellings, especially of foreign words and place names; a number of abbreviations in the original have been clarified in full words to make the text either more accessible (particularly when these refer to foreign currencies or measurements) or more consistent (such as in the names of months). The text is otherwise as it appears in the Stage Publishing Company edition of 1908. Where place names have subsequently been changed, the text has not been amended and the current place name is given in the notes. These annotations serve to provide further information on some of the personalities mentioned, to contextualize the narrative within the scope of the scholarly discussions mentioned above, and to indicate those aspects of the 1902– 1906 tours on which further published...