New Light Thrown on an Old Tragedy

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23043, 21 May 1938, Page 4 (Supplement)

New Light Thrown on an Old Tragedy

TOHN WILKES BOOTH, the assassin of Abraham Lincoln, -was the ninth of " ten children born to Junius Brutus Booth, an American actor. One of his brothers was Edwin Booth, who reached higher rank 011 the stage tban any other member of the family. He had .1 sister, Asia —so named "in remembrance of that country where God first walked with man" —who was ardently attached to him. In 1859 she married John S. Clarke, another actor. After the tragedy of 1865 she wrote a memoir of her brother Wilkes winch constitutes half of "The Unlocked Book." (The remainder consists of a foreword by Eleanor Farjeon, a description of the Booth homestead, a poem by General Tyrcll, several extracts from newspapers, and a selection of family letters). The memoir was written in a locked book, which was bequeathed, at the author s death in 1888, to the late B. L. Farjeon, son-in-law of Joseph Jefferson, a closo friend of the Booths. Authority was given him to publish it at some time if he saw lit, but he never availed himself of this permission. It came finally into the possession of Mr. Farjeon's daughter, who has now printed it. Mrs. Clark's contribution to this volume is not so much a biography as a collection of reminiscences, bhc writes most fully of her association with her brother during thoir childhood. One of the most striking sections of the book is her account of the ordeal through t\ hich the whole of the Booth family had to pass when the crime of this one member of it had made it notorious.

"The Unlocked Book." A Memoir of John Wilkes Booth. By his sister, Asia Booth Clarke Foreword by Eleanor Farjeon. CFaber and Faber).