E. Lawrence Abel

I found the author's thesis plausible but overstated. Its one thing to say that JWB was on intimate sexual terms with most of his female counterparts, quite another to say without corroboration that he was with any particular actress.

His tertiary syphilis thesis could also stand more corroboration. Although JWB died at twenty-six of a gunshot wound, I found instructive a comparison to Oscar Wilde who died thirty-five years later at the age of forty-six. Although the Britannica Encyclopedia gives Wilde's cause of death as meningitis following an acute ear infection, his most recent definitive biographer, Richard Ellman, found his immediate postmortem symptoms consistent with tertiary syphilis, i.e., a spontaneous spillage of blood from the ears and nose. I realize Wilde had twenty more years for his disease to develop but it would be interesting to know if there are any generalizations that can be made in this regard. (JWB did not have the blood spillage.)

Beyond that I felt the book was a little rushed to publication by an uninquisitive author. It is free from typographical errors except for "chocking" should be "chocking" on page 231. I just happened to notice that Chapter 12 ends with a missing footnote 39. I didn't check for others.

Given the itinerant lifestyle of stage actors how did JWB ambulate from place to place? Certainly a map of the eastern United States and Lower Canada depicting cities and modes of travel would have been illustrative. Other examples:

p.19 - JWB's parents and older brother "docked in San Francisco." Did they arrive, via the Horn or the Isthmus?
p.37 - JWB was distressed by Richmond's climate. Given that he had arrived September one might assume that the worst of the heat and humidity were past.
p.44 - First a reference to a man named Paddock, then to one named Henry seemingly without context. Only by checking the index did I find a Henry Paddock.
pp.50 and 51 - Baltimore's militia units are listed, then Colonel Turner Ashby's Black Horse Militia in passing.
p.81 - A stanza of the "Southern Marseillaise" would have been illustrative.
pp.93 and 98 - We are first told that twenty citizens died in a Baltimore riot, then five pages later that twelve citizens had died. Presumably it is the same riot since four soldiers died in each.
pp.93 and 94 - The author makes much of the Western sisters act but next to nothing of the Irving sisters. In fact Marie Irving does not even appear in the index.
p.158 - Erysipelas is not related to syphilis and it is ridiculous to suggest otherwise.
pp.182-183 - On the first page hand writing analysis identifies the writer and on the following page the writer flatly contradicts himself. At this point I lost interest in documenting inconsistencies and ended this review.… (meer)