Life on the Stage: My Personal Experiences and Recollections

New York: McClure, Phillips & Co.. Very Good. 1902. 5th impression. Hardcover. (no dust jacket) [an attractive copy with a sound binding, minor bumping and slight wear to extremities, and a touch of fraying to cloth at the spine ends; gilt lettering on both spine and front cover is still bright and easily readable; there's an attractive vintage bookplate (of playwright Alden Nash) on the front pastedown, and a charming (non-authorial) gift inscription on the verso of the frontispiece portrait, reading "For Papa / with many happy returns / of the day / from / his children / Nov. 21st 1902"] (B&W photo frontispiece) An "and then I played -- " theatrical memoir by Ms. Morris (184?-1925) -- a pretty big deal on the American stage in her day, but now, alas, lost to living human memory. Born in Toronto but raised in Cleveland, she made her stage debut around 1860 as a member of the resident company of the Cleveland Academy of Music, graduating to leading roles in 1869; throughout the 1870s she became a star on the New York stage in such plays as "Camille" and "Jezebel," and (per Wikipedia) "also toured extensively, especially in the 1880s, and everywhere mesmerized audiences with her emotional power. Although neither a great beauty nor a great artist, nor trained in elocution or stagecraft, she had an instinctive genius for portraying the impassioned and often suffering heroines of French melodrama. The passing of the vogue for that sort of theatre, together with her uncertain health, brought her career to a close in the 1890s." Of notable interest in her narrative is "Chapter Fourteenth," which is devoted entirely to her memories of her youthful encounters with John Wilkes Booth. .