Skip to main content

Walt Whitman to Edwin Booth, 3 September 1884

Dear Mr Booth

Thank you for sending me the volume the Booths—It does not furnish me the picture I wanted—(I am very particular & shall not be satisfied till I get one that fills the bill)—But the volume is more helpful to me (in touches, corrections, guidance &c to my piece) than I can describe—& the reading of all about your father, of absorbing interest—He was a beautiful character.1

Walt Whitman

Correspondent:
Edwin Thomas Booth (1833–1893) was an American actor, famous for performing Shakespeare in the U.S. and Europe, the son of actor Junius Brutus Booth (1796–1852), and the brother of Abraham Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth (1838–1865), also an actor. He was the owner of Booth's Theatre in New York.


Notes

  • 1. See Whitman's letter to Booth from August 21, 1884, asking for "a good characteristic portrait of your father either in citizen's costume, or, (if very good) in one of his dramatic characters." [back]
Back to top