Superbly edited and annotated, this collection of the writings of John Wilkes Booth constitutes a major new primary source that contributes to scholarship on Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War, and nineteenth-century theater history. The nearly seventy documents--more than half published here for the first time--include love letters written during the summer of 1864, when Booth was conspiring against Lincoln, explicit statements of Booth's political convictions, and the diary he kept during his futile twelve-day flight after the assassination.
 

John Rhodehamel, Norris Foundation Curator of American Historical Manuscripts at the Huntington Library, is the author of The Great Experiment: George Washington and the American Republic and other books. Louise Taper, a noted Lincoln collector, owns the largest collection extant of John Wilkes Booth letters.