The Italian Bride. A Play in Five Acts. Written for Miss Eliza Logan, and Published for Private Distribution

1856. 1st Edition . Soft cover. Very Good. 8vo. Original brown cloth, stamped in blind, gilt title on spine. Savannah: John M. Cooper & Co., 1856. First Edition. (Singerman 1440. DeRenne 579. American Civil War Research Database. Rosen, The Jewish Confederates. Not in Sabin, Eberstadt, Wright, Decker.) Levy, a Jew from Savannah, was editor-in-chief of the Savannah Daily Advertiser. He enlisted in the 1st Georgia Infantry in August 1861 as a Captain and was promoted to Major in November. He was listed as a prisoner of war in June of 1864 at Marietta, and released from a Union camp at Johnsons Island, Ohio, in June of 1865. In April 1868 Levy criticized in print the political views of a certain Dr. James Waring. Waring, apparently thin-skinned, demanded a duel. Levy obliged, but luckily friends were able to defuse the situation. (Encyclopedia of Southern Jewish Communities, 2013). Eliza Logan was a popular actress of the time, daughter of Cornelius Logan, a comic actor and playwright who served as her manager. Born in Philadelphia, Logan made her name in the antebellum South, with many engagements in cities such as Savannah, where she, no doubt, inspired Mr. Levy to write this work in her honor. With contemporary pencil signatures of Major Ben E. Crane on front pastedown. Crane, a Georgian active in the Protestant Episcopal Church, served the Confederacy in the Civil War. Light water staining to back cover; head of spine chipped; light foxing; o/w Very Nice