Brightly coloured lithographic posters were all the rage for advertising towards the end of the 19th century. This poster was printed by the Devon printer and engraver Theophilus Creber (1845-1902) based in Plymouth's Union Street, who called himself a 'show printer'. He was obviously a serious fan of entertainment since he became proprietor of the Olympia Theatre Plymouth in 1887, reopening it as a Theatre of Varieties in 1887; of Fred Ginster's Circus that he sold in 1898, and of The Theatre Royal Eastbourne that he refurbished and reopened in 1898.

This was probably not printed as one poster, or to advertise a specific circus, but as an example of Creber's work for orders. Circus was hugely popular in the 19th century, and almost all would have included equestrian performance. A circus proprietor would probably have ordered one or more of these images, each of which bears Creber's artist's palette and paint-brush logo with his trade name 'Litho Creber Plymouth'. Details of specific circuses would then have been overprinted.