Title	[Cabinet Card photograph of Edwin Booth]
Date	1889
Creator	B. J. Falk
Artistic roles	Edwin Booth (Actor)
Theme	Dynasties
Places	New York (N.Y.)
Item description	Cabinet Card of Edwin Booth (1833-1893). The photograph was copyrighted in 1889 by B J Falk and produced by Newsboy in New York. Booth is seated in a chair and is wearing a gray textured suit with a white tie with black criss-crossing stripes. He looks somewhat uncomfortable (maybe because the suit is too small).
Object narrative	Edwin Booth (1833-1893) was born Edwin Thomas Booth, the fourth son of prominent tragic actor, Junius Brutus Booth. He was named after another great tragic actor in Booth's circle, Edwin Forrest. The next son to be born to Booth would be John Wilkes. All his life Edwin had an observant, thoughtful, melancholy disposition (Winter, Biographical Sketch 9), according to William Winter, critic and biographer of the time. In 1846, Edwin's education came to a standstill as he was called upon to act as his father's companion while he was touring. The elder Booth was not capable of staying sober or taking care of himself while away from Edwin's mother; Edwin became a soothing and loyal chaperon to his father, and also gained his father's skill in playing great tragic roles. In 1849 at the age of sixteen, he first stepped on stage to relieve the stage manager of the role of Tressel in Richard III. He continued after this to play in other small and large roles alongside his father. In 1852, Junius Brutus Booth Sr. died and Edwin continued to perform in the Western states and even toured to Australia and Hawaii with Laura Keene, but his father's penchant for hard drinking and carousing rubbed off on him. Returning East in 1856, his experience building both farcical and tragic roles over the preceding years brought him almost immediate fame and recognition. He toured extensively and married Mary Devlin in 1860, a lady with whom he was very much in love, but his drinking strained not only their marriage but also his acting career on many occasions. Only her death in 1863 brought Edwin to the bottom of the pit and the end of his drinking addiction. He returned to the stage a changed man and created his now lasting portrayal of Hamlet of which he was most known. Other important and known roles in his repertoire were Richard III, Sir Giles Overreach (A New Way to Pay Old Debts), Richelieu, Shylock, and Lear. On April 14, 1865, he had just finished a performance of Hamlet in Boston when word reached him that his brother, John Wilkes, also an actor, had shot President Lincoln in Ford's Theatre in Washington D.C. Edwin retired from the stage in mortification and grief, but returned in January 1866, beginning the second portion of his career which would see the erection of his own theatre in New York and many more successes. This photograph of Booth was taken by B. J. Falk in New York in 1889. It was produced in cabinet card form by Newsboy. It shows the 56 year old Booth just four years before his death in 1893.
Type	Text
Original format	Portrait photo
Original publisher	[Place of publication not identified] : [publisher not identified]
Language	en
Contributing institution	Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives, UNCG University Libraries
Source collection	MSS255 Robert C. Hansen Performing Arts Collection
Series/grouping	10.1.1: Photographs, Cards, Caricatures/Satire and Other Pictoral Materials -- Photographs -- People
Box	88
Finding aid link	http://library.uncg.edu/info/depts/scua/collections/manuscripts/ead/mss255.xml
Preferred citation	[Identification of item], Robert C. Hansen Performing Arts Collection, 1753-2006 (MSS255), Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives and Manuscripts, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, NC, USA.
Rights statement	http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Additional rights information	NO COPYRIGHT - UNITED STATES. This item has been determined to be free of copyright restrictions in the United States. The user is responsible for determing actual copyright status for any reuse of the material.
Object ID	MSS255.088.011
Digital publisher	The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, University Libraries, PO Box 26170, Greensboro NC 27402-6170, 336.334.5304
OCLC number	872280883

[Cabinet Card photograph of Edwin Booth]

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