Advertising as Everyday Spectacle: Thomas J. Barratt, Pears’ Soap, and the Revival of Print
Speaker: Professor Casey Smith (Corcoran College of Art + Design)

3 February 2012
3:30 - 5:00 p.m.
Woodrow Wilson Room (LJ-113)
Jefferson Building
Library of Congress

In the last decades of the 19th century, the firm A. & F. Pears innovated marketing techniques that earned its co-director, TJ Barratt, the reputation as “the father of modern advertising.” Ads for Pears’ Soap in newspapers, journals, penny novels, painted murals, signs, posters, handbills, and other printed ephemera were everywhere. This material, and printed ephemera in general, remains largely neglected in studies of the period. A close examination of Pears’ advertisements reveals direct and deliberate engagement with the political, artistic, and literary trends of the time. The revival of print at the end of the 19th century can be seen in the jobbing printing of advertisements, handbills, and leaflets that operated outside the economies of book production. The study of the printed ephemera commissioned by A. & F. Pears in the 1880s and 1890s reveals a rich history at the intersection of art and commerce. Some of the figures in this history include: John Everett Millais, Marie Corelli, William Gladstone, Andrew Tuer, Jerome K. Jerome, Mark Twain, Lilly Langtry, Walter Crane, Beatrix Potter, Wyndham Lewis, and James Joyce. The presentation will be amply illustrated with images from the collections of the Library of Congress, the Bodleian Library (via the John Johnson Archive), and other sources.

Please join us for Dr. Smith's talk and for dinner afterwards.

The Jefferson Building is located between First and Second Streets, SE in the District of Columbia. Nearest metro stops are Capitol South (blue and orange lines) and Union Station (red line). For further information, consult the Washington Area Group for Print Culture Studies website at http://wagpcs.wordpress.com/, or contact Sabrina Baron and Eleanor Shevlin at washagpcs "AT" umd.edu.