AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED BY DRAMA CRITIC WILLIAM WINTER, ASKING ACTOR FRANCIS WILSON IF WILSON CAN OFFER HIM SEATS FOR ONE OF HIS PERFORMANCES. by Winter, William (1836-1917). American drama critic and author - 1896.

New York: September 21, 1896., 1896.. Very good. - Letter penned in black ink & filling one side of an 8-12 inch high by 5-1/2 inch wide cream-colored sheet of New-York Tribune letterhead with a vignette in black at the top. Signed "William Winter." Two words are partially faded. There are 3 small fragments of paper adhering to the verso where the letter has been removed from an album. Folded twice for mailing. Very good.

Winter writes asking a favor of actor Francis Wilson: "My young people are wishful to see your performance, and -- at some risk of tiring your kindness - I write to ask for a Box at the Knickerbocker Theatre...for next Saturday evening...".

William Winter [1836-1917 was born in Gloucester, Massachusetts. He moved to New York City in 1859 and began his career as literary critic of the Saturday Press, then of the New York Albion [1861-65]. For the following forty years [1865-1909] he was drama critic of the New York Tribune. Brooks Atkinson, in his history of American theatre, deemed Winter an intolerable prude for denouncing modern dramatists such as Ibsen and Shaw and foreign stars like Sarah Bernhardt and Eleanor Duse for their personal lives. He credited Winter, however, with his remarkable memory which enabled him to leave vivid descriptions of the work of Edwin Booth, Henry Irving and others; and for his sometimes discriminating reviews of highly popular dramas [he regarded "East Lynne" as a piece of claptrap].

Francis Wilson [1854-1935] was an American stage actor, born in Philadelphia, who was the founding president of Actors Equity [1913-1920]. After several years playing in comedy and comic opera and making a great success in "Erminie" [1886], Wilson made his first appearance as a star in "The Oolah". He formed his own theatre company in 1899. He was also an author, writing several plays, a memoir of Joseph Jefferson, an autobiography, and "John Wilkes Booth, Fact and Fiction of Lincoln's Assassination" [1929], which he wrote with information from his close friend Edwin Booth.