"Rip van Winkle": The autobiography of Joseph Jefferson

Joe Jefferson the Third, who came of English stock - his ancestor Thomas Jefferson was with Garrick at Drury Lane - was nevertheless one of America's first and finest native actors, and typical of all that was best in the Americans of his time. His Autobiography is irradiated by the serene kindliness of his most engaging personality, lit by flashes of merriment and tempered always by the dry wit that was characteristic of him. His book surveys a wide stretch of American theatrical history, from the struggling pioneer days of his childhood to the success and acclaim of his "Rip Van Winkle" and "Bob Acres" - two of his most famous parts. He acted in England, where on one occasion he attended a London theatre with some four-and-twenty Jeffersons of the English branch of the family, and was appreciative of the applause which greeted him, though he never dared to face an English audience in the part of Bob Acres. He had the keen eye of the painter, and the literary skill to depict in a few lines the outstanding players of the time, and his book is packed with memorable portraits whose generosity and delicacy of touch reveal the author as much as his subjects. For, as his English granddaughter, Miss Eleanor Farjeon, says in her excellent introduction to this edition, "it was not stage genius only that gave him his unique place in his country's affections. It was an irresistible quality in the man himself, a sunlight, an over-running lovableness, a contagious humour, which, while he made his audiences his, made Joe theirs."