Centers and Peripheries: Exhibiting London's "Marvels" in Britain's "Second City".

Commercial exhibitions animated cities in Georgian Ireland during a period associated with the commercialization of leisure. They included automata, art and architectural models, circuses, equestrian spectacles, menageries, and waxworks: in other words, what people paid to see, and what was advertised as such in terms of exhibitions, spectacles, and shows. Billed as rational, improving, or wondrous, many of them originated in London. This essay considers how such entertainments were presented to, and received by, audiences in Dublin, Britain's "second city." How did audiences in Ireland encounter spectacle, beyond the freely accessible types of stimuli offered by balloons rising over the city, firework displays, militia parades, or royal visits? What were the boundaries or distinctions in terms of what could be seen and by whom? What was distinctive about the exhibitions or shows that were mounted in Dublin, relative to London? This article draws on the material culture of spectacle in this period to address these questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]