Unlocked Book: A Memoir of John Wilkes Booth by His Sister

Since it was first published in 1938, Asia Booth Clarke’s memoir of her brother John Wilkes Booth has been recognized as the single most important document available for understanding the personality of the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln. Clarke, a poet and author of two other volumes of biography of her celebrated actor-family members, wrote this reminiscence in 1874 when Lincoln’s murder and her brother’s ensuing death at the hands of federal soldiers were still painfully fresh in her mind. She hoped at some point to see the work published. Yet she felt compelled to keep it secret because it might enrage her husband, a professional comedian whose anger at his own arrest in 1865 on suspicion of association with Booth had threatened their marriage. At her death in 1888 the manuscript passed to friends. A half century later her heirs felt the public was receptive to such an intimate view of the most famous assassin in American history. This edition includes the first biographical appreciation of the talented Asia and corrects deficiencies in earlier prints of the memoir. Also, published for the first time, are family letters about the assassination, a chronology of Booth’s life, and a family genealogy. Asia’s memoir is an indispensable resource for perceiving the complexities of her ill-fated brother. Indeed, as has been said, she “turns on the light in the Booth family living room.” Certainly no outsider would give such insights into the turbulent Booth’s childhood or share such unique personal knowledge of the gifted actor. Asia portrays him as a enigmatic figure, at once gentle and romantic while passionate and fanatical. She writes with a sister’s affection and even with indulgence, but she mingles these with horror as she confronts the calamitous aftermath the assassination brought to Booth and to his family.