Edwin Booth: A Bio-Bibliography

(Hardback)

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Edwin Booth was the foremost Shakespearean actor in late 19th century America, enjoying almost mythic status. This comprehensive analysis and documentation of his career provides an aperture from which to view theatre and society of the period. The scholarly bibliography of over 1000 annotated entries includes substantive writings about Booth in books, journals and dissertations covering 130 years during and after his career as well as ephemeral references to Booth's own writings and a section on Booth manuscript materials identified in 64 repositories in the United States and England. A biographical sketch analyzes Booth's career in terms of the major periods and upheavals in his life: his early fame, the death of his first wife, the assassination of President Lincoln by his brother, his management of Booth's Theatre, and his chronology of major events, a genealogical chart, and reproductions of portraits and playbills. Fully indexed, ths volume makes material readily available to Booth scholars as well as to others researching related theatre and social theory.

Author Bio

L. TERRY OGGEL is Associate Dean, College of Humanities and Sciences, Virginia Commonwealth University. He has published extensively on Edwin Booth, Mark Twain, James Russell Lowell, and other topics in American literature and theatre and is the editor of The Letters and Notebooks of Mary Devlin Booth (Greenwood Press, 1987).