Heading: (1861 - Lincoln, Abraham)
Author: Keene, Laura
Title: Autograph Letter, signed, from the star of Our American Cousin and the woman who is rumored to have cradled the head of a dying President Abraham Lincoln
Place Published: Philadelphia
Publisher:
Date Published: 1869
Description:

Two page autograph letter, signed, on a folding sheet of black-bordered stationery. Approximately 8¼x5¼". Original envelope, postmarked Philadelphia, present. 

Laura Keene writes a Judge Carter of Cincinnati regarding a play he has written and hopes to have produced. Keene passes on the opportunity and suggests that a New York theater might be more appropriate given her experience that "Plays do not run long enough in Philadelphia to pay for the fine mounting your piece deserves." Keene was a quite successful actress and one of the first women to manage a theater in the United States. She was the female lead in the play Our American Cousin on the evening the President Lincoln attended Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C. It is rumored that following the fatal shooting of the President Ms. Keene made her way to the President's booth and cradled the wounded man's head against her dress. Keene however never offered these details in an account of the evening herself and there are no contemporary reports confirming this scenario. All accounts of her holding the President's head are from later remembrances. Letters from Ms Keene are quite scarce with few to be found in institutional holdings as well. Also included is a signed photograph of Judge A.G.W. Carter and a broadsheet announcement for one of Carter's works "The Sicilian Sisters" at the National Theatre, February 26, 1869.

Creased from mailing, some browning and fading, small chip to second sheet; very good.