Snapshots of the Past

My name is Simon Pure, Esq. : I am the greatest man that ever lived – Vintage Print

My name is Simon Pure, Esq. : I am the greatest man that ever lived, [ca. 1870] — vintage poster
My name is Simon Pure, Esq. : I am the greatest man that ever lived, [ca. 1870]. Vintage poster from the Historic Print Archive collection.

(Originally scanned by the Library of Congress. Each image is professionally and digitally cleaned of artifacts such as color bars and extra borders prior to printing.)

Description

This vintage poster of My name is Simon Pure, Esq. : I am the greatest man that ever lived brings a moment of history to your wall. It comes from the collections of the Library of Congress, scanned from the original and carefully restored.

Choose the framed print, ready to hang the day it arrives, or the unframed print for a frame of your own. Perfect for a home, office, library or classroom wall, and a gift with a story behind it. Free shipping in the lower 48 states. Since 2001, Snapshots of the Past has shipped historic prints to tens of thousands of customers around the world.

My name is Simon Pure, Esq. : I am the greatest man that ever lived

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The phrase "My name is Simon Pure, Esq." borrows from a stock character in Susanna Centlivre's 1717 comedy *A Bold Stroke for a Wife*, whose name later became shorthand for the genuine article. Here the borrowed name carries a self-congratulatory boast, "I am the greatest man that ever lived," that reads as mock-pompous. Dated around 1870, the poster belongs to a wave of political prints from the years after the Fifteenth Amendment, when Black men were newly voting and running for office, and such images were often used to ridicule them. The record places it in a resource on African-American history, so its subject and purpose are worth reading with that context in mind.

Created / published[ca. 1870]
Medium1 print (poster)
GenrePolitical posters 1870-1880.Prints 1870-1880.
NotesPublished in : The African-American mosiac, a Library of Congress resource guide for the study of black history and culture / Debra Newman Ham, ed. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1993.
SourceLibrary of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
Original scan3,300 × 4,096 px · prints to 11 × 14 in at 300 dpi
ReferenceAMZ-SOTP-HPA-184400

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