Introduction: Ladies and Gentlemen, I Bring You . . .; Part One: Street Spectacles; 1: Glimpsing Urban Savages; 2: Artful Promotion; Part Two: Metropolitan Encounters; 3: Managing Performance; 4: Recruiting Entertainers; 5: Interpreting Exhibitions; Part Three: The Natural History of Race; 6: Transforming "Unfruitful Wonder"; 7: The End of an Affair; Conclusion: Afterlives; Acknowledgments; Appendix: Terminology; Abbreviations; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

In May 1853, Charles Dickens paid a visit to the & ldquo;savages at Hyde Park Corner, & rdquo; an exhibition of thirteen imported Zulus performing cultural rites ranging from songs and dances to a & ldquo;witch-hunt & rdquo; and marriage ceremony. Dickens was not the only Londoner intrigued by these & ldquo;living curiosities & rdquo;: displayed foreign peoples provided some of the most popular public entertainments of their day. At first, such shows tended to be small-scale entrepreneurial speculations of just a single person or a small group. By the end of the century, performers were being imported.