Men of the Time, eleventh edition/Booth, Edwin
BOOTH, Edwin, born near Baltimore, Maryland, November 15, 1833. He is a son of the actor Junius Brutus Booth, and was trained for the dramatic profession. Having filled many minor parts, he made his first regular appearance on the stage as Tressel, in "Richard III.," in 1849, and in 1851 performed the character of Richard III., in place of his father, who had been suddenly taken ill. After a tour through California, Australia, many of the Pacific Islands, and the Sandwich Islands, he re-appeared at New York in 1857, visited England and the Continent in 1861, and returning to New York commenced a series of Shaksperean revivals at the Winter Garden Theatre in 1863. After a series of successful engagements in Boston, Philadelphia, and other large cities, he commenced, in 1868, the erection of a new theatre in New York, which was opened Feb. 3, 1869; but the cost of the building, in which Mr. Booth had invested all his means, prevented ultimate pecuniary success, and the theatre, although it still bears his name, passed from his hands. For several years he virtually retired from the stage, but near the close of 1877 he began in New York a series of brilliant performances. He rarely undertakes any except the leading characters of Shakspere: Hamlet, Othello, Iago, Shylock, and Richard III., Hamlet being his most admired personation. The last two years he has chiefly spent in England, where he has met with marked success. In the early part of 1883 he played Shaksperean parts at Berlin and Hamburg with great applause.