Wemmlinger, Raymond

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Wemmlinger, Raymond

PERSONAL:

Born in NY.

ADDRESSES:

Home and office—New York, NY. Office—Hampden-Booth Theatre Library, 16 Gramercy Park, New York, NY 10003.

CAREER:

Hampden-Booth Theatre Library, New York, NY, curator and librarian.

WRITINGS:

Edwin Booth's Legacy: Treasures from the Hampden-Booth Theatre Collection at the Players, Hampden-Booth Theatre Library (New York, NY), 1989.

Booth's Daughter (novel), Calkins Creek (Honesdale, PA), 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

Raymond Wemmlinger is the curator and librarian at New York City's Hampden-Booth Theatre Library, which houses a collection of nineteenth-century British and American theater books, photographs, costumes, and memorabilia. The collection originated with Edwin Booth, a celebrated stage actor of the era best known for his roles in Shakespearean tragedies, particularly Hamlet. He founded The Players, a club for actors, in New York City in 1888; the building now houses the library. Booth's personal collection of diaries, biographies, letters, and portraits serves as the library's nucleus.

In his debut novel, Booth's Daughter, Wemmlinger examines the life of the famed actor through the eyes of his only child, Edwina. Set in the 1880s, the work centers on the relationship between Edwina and her immensely talented but mercurial father, who controlling ways threaten her chances at love and personal freedom. Edwina is also burdened by her familial association with her uncle, John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated U.S. President Abraham Lincoln. "Wemmlinger presents an interesting picture of upper middle class existence" during the time period, observed School Library Journal reviewer Charli Osborne, and Jennifer Mattson, writing in Booklist, remarked that "elements reminiscent of an Edith Wharton novel—the mannered social interactions, Gilded Age settings, and matrimony-bound momentum" will appeal to readers. According to a contributor in Kirkus Reviews, Wemmlinger's "quick-moving and well-written story employs appropriately old-fashioned speech and beliefs, and the result is enthralling."