Bibliographical Note

The only previous attempt at a serious biography of Charlotte Cushman was Emma Stebbins' Charlotte Cushman: Her Letters and Memories of Her Life (1878). Books by C. E. Clements, W. T. Price, and Mrs. Dr. Walker, all written before 1900, purported to be biographies; actually they are echoes of the Stebbins biography or expanded essays about Charlotte Cushman.

Charlotte Cushman's career is so fully documented in letters, diaries, journals, memoirs, scrapbooks, and memorabilia, as well as the public press, that space limitations preclude my indicating all the sources behind this biography. While my source notes specify most of the books and newspaper articles, the primary materials I used seem to merit special comment.

The Charlotte Cushman Papers in the Manuscripts Division of the Library of Congress formed the major base of my study. In the hundreds of letters contained in these fifteen leather-bound volumes and supplementary boxes--donated to the Library by the Cushman family--is preserved most of the record Charlotte left of herself. The collection includes the memoir written by Emma Crow Cushman as well as numerous letters addressed to Charlotte, scrapbooks, photograph albums, and similar materials. The Folger Shakespeare Library has a rich assemblage of portraits, photographs, and drawings of Charlotte in her stage roles and copies of her most important acting scripts. The Harvard Library Theatre Collection is rich in letters, pictures, promptbooks, playbills, and scrapbooks. Its most valuable items are bound into an extra-illustrated copy of Joseph N. Ireland's Records of the New York Stage: From 1750 to 1860, forty-eight large volumes packed with manuscript letters, clippings, and pictures. The Yale Bienecke Library has a similarly valuable copy of Ireland. Charlotte's diary for 1844-45 is one of the several uniquely helpful items in the Butler Library at Columbia. The Robinson Locke scrapbooks in the New York Public Library's theatre collection make it especially valuable. The University of Rochester Library holds the most important items in the Seward-Cushman correspondence. The Johns Hopkins University Library owns most of the Cushman-Lanier correspondence. The Hoblitzelle Theatre Collection at the University of Texas at Austin contains a rich trove of letters, clippings, and playbills. The James T. and Annie Fields collection at the Huntington Library contains letters to and from the major names figuring in Charlotte's career. The National Library of Scotland holds most of the Cushman-Jane Carlyle correspondence.

In addition to these public repositories, the Players Club has letters, playbills, and the best Cushman costumes and stage properties still in existence. The Charlotte Cushman Club in Philadelphia holds important Cushman letters and memorabilia. The Cushman family collection contains painted portraits, sculptures, letters, and more photograph albums.

For the privilege of using these materials, for the courtesy attendant upon their being made available to me, I am grateful.

J. L.