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Offering an exploration of how one of the most popular and spectacular forms of postbellum entertainment was represented in the period's fiction, this chapter considers the way the circus became both a recognisably modern form of commercial business as well as a site of exotic and sensual escape. The arrival of a travelling circus in town is a frequent episode in postbellum rural fiction, and this chapter considers the complex and often contradictory narrative implications of such an episode—representing the presence of a modern capitalist economy and a disruption to everyday life, the circus also embodies and enacts many of the complex sensual, social and psychological connotations of urban modernity. Amongst others, the chapter examines the place of the circus in rural fictions by Sarah Orne Jewett, Hamlin Garland, Booth Tarkington, and Alice Brown.

This chapter examines some of the frequent representations of train journeys found across a variety of rural fictions. Indicative of the deeper incursions of urban capitalism into the American countryside, the train is considered as a herald of modernity as well as a vehicle from which postbellum Americans encountered and traversed rural landscapes in a distinctly modern way. Examples of train journeys in texts by numerous writers–including Maurice Thompson, Hamlin Garland, William Dean Howells, Sarah Orne Jewett, Stephen Crane, and Booth Tarkington–are read against a detailed account of how such journeys altered the travelling subject's relationship to both time and vision.

Beginning with the 1922 edition, the Follies reach the end of their glory days. Ziegfeld needs to find a new way to entertain audiences. As he struggles to come up with another hit, he is devastated to learn that Marilyn Miller plans to marry Jack Pickford. Ziegfeld’s objection to their marriage spurs Miller to claim that he made advances to her and is planning to divorce Billie Burke. Ziegfeld and Burke’s precarious marriage remains intact, despite the scandal. Ziegfeld finds Burke a play that he hopes will heal their relationship, but Rose Briar is not a hit. The latter part of the chapter contains previously unpublished correspondence between Burke and Ziegfeld. Although they are still together, it seems that Burke is more invested in the marriage than Ziegfeld is. The chapter ends on a note of uncertainty for Ziegfeld: he has not produced a hit since Sally and fears he is not adapting well to the preferences of 1920s theatergoers.