Edwin Booth

Edwin Thomas Booth (November 13, 1833 – June 7, 1893) was a famous 19th-century American actor who toured throughout America and the major capitals of Europe, performing Shakespearean plays. In 1869 he founded Booth's Theatre in New York, a spectacular theatre that was quite modern for its time. Some theatrical historians consider him the greatest American actor, and the greatest Hamlet, of the 19th century. However, his achievements are often overshadowed by his relationship with his brother, John Wilkes Booth, the man who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln.

Early life

Booth was born in Bel Air, Maryland, into the English American theatrical Booth family. He was the illegitimate son of another famous actor, Junius Brutus Booth, an Englishman, who named Edwin after Edwin Forrest and Thomas Flynn, two of Junius' colleagues. He was the older brother of John Wilkes Booth, himself a successful actor who gained notoriety as the assassin of President Lincoln.

Nora Titone, in her book My Thoughts Be Bloody, recounts how the shame and ambition of Junius Brutus Booth's three illegitimate actor sons, Junius Brutus Booth, Jr. (who never achieved the stage stardom of his two younger actor brothers), Edwin Booth, and John Wilkes Booth, spurred them to strive, as rivals, for achievement and acclaim—Edwin, a Unionist, and John Wilkes, a Confederate and the assassin of Abraham Lincoln.