| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.4

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Joseph Jefferson: Dean of the American Theatre. By Arthur W. Bloom. (Savannah: Beil, 2000. xx, 506 pp. $35.00, ISBN 0-913720-55-0.)

Arthur W. Bloom has written the definitive biography of the nineteenth-century comic actor Joseph Jefferson (1829-1905), best known for his portrayal of Rip Van Winkle, a role he acted for about forty years. Jefferson's own autobiography (1889) offers a chatty and entertaining commentary on his life and nineteenth-century theater, and, until now, the best biographies were affectionate reminiscences by Jefferson's theatrical cohorts, Francis Wilson (1906) and William Winter (1894). Bloom's work provides voluminous detail against which to measure Jefferson's lengthy career. 1

In three hundred pages Bloom chronologically examines Jefferson's youth and theatrical apprenticeship, his early career with the actress and manager Laura Keene, his years abroad during the Civil War, and his emergence and decades of touring stardom in the role of Rip. A hundred-page appendix details Jefferson's tours from the season of 1866-1867 until his last in spring 1904. Bloom lists every town, theater, and performance he could document over that thirty-eight years. An additional hundred pages of endnotes add substantial material to this exhaustive study; they also identify the author's admirably wide-ranging sources. . . .

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