[Stephenson, Henry] [Lincoln, Abraham] Drinkwater, John.

Abraham Lincoln – A Play. With an Introduction by Arnold Bennett.

First Edition. Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1919. Octavo. XII, 112 pages. Hardcover / Original, illustrated boards with spinelabel. Signed in full by actor Henry Stephenson on the titlepage: “Henry Stephenson – 10.XII.20” / Binding slightly rubbed. Spinlelabel worn. Otherwise in excellent condition with only minor signs of external wear. Bookseller Label from Brentano’s in New York.

Henry Stephenson (16 April 1871 – 24 April 1956) was a British stage and film actor. He portrayed friendly and wise gentlemen in many films of the 1930s and 1940s. Among his roles were Sir Joseph Banks in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) and Mr. Brownlow in Oliver Twist (1948). Harry Stephenson Garraway was born to British parents in Grenada, British West Indies and educated in England. He started acting in his twenties. He appeared on British and American stages and made his Broadway debut in 1901, playing the messenger in A Message from Mars. In the following decades, he performed in more than 30 Broadway plays.

Stephenson made his film debut in 1917 and appeared in a few silent films, but made his mark mostly as an elderly man in sound films. Between 1931 and 1932, he appeared in the successful Broadway play Cynara with over 200 performances. He came to Hollywood for the film version of Cynara, starring Ronald Colman and with Stephenson reprising his role of John Tring. In the same year, he played the tycoon C.B. Gaerste in Red-Headed Woman, Leslie Howard’s father Rufus Collier in The Animal Kingdom and Doctor Alliot in A Bill of Divorcement. In 1933, he appeared as Mr. Laurence in Little Women. He specialized in portraying wise, dignified and friendly British gentlemen in supporting roles.

He appeared overall in 90 films from 1917 to 1951. He often played historical figures like Sir Joseph Banks in the Oscar-winning adventure film Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) and Florimond Claude, Comte de Mercy-Argenteau in Marie Antoinette (1938).

Stephenson worked with film star Errol Flynn in the films Captain Blood, The Charge of the Light Brigade, The Prince and the Pauper, and The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, often as Flynn’s paternal friend and superior. He portrayed Sir Thomas Lancing in Tarzan Finds a Son! in 1939, and Sir Guy Henderson in Tarzan and the Amazons in 1945. He seldom played dark figures; among the exceptions was the snobbish Mr. Bryant in Mr. Lucky in 1943. Stephenson also appeared in literary adaptions, for example as the friendly lawyer Havisham in Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936) and as Mr. Brownlow in David Lean’s film adaptation of Oliver Twist (1948). He made his last film in 1949, but appeared in two television series in 1951 before the end of his career. In 1950, after finishing his role of Cardinal Gaspar de Quiroga in the play That Lady, Stephenson retired from the stage. (Wikipedia)

John Drinkwater (1 June 1882 – 25 March 1937) was an English poet and dramatist.
Drinkwater was born in Leytonstone, London to actor/author Albert Edwin Drinkwater (1851-1923) and Annie Beck (neé Brown), and worked as an insurance clerk. In the period immediately before the First World War he was one of the group of poets associated with the Gloucestershire village of Dymock, along with Rupert Brooke and others.
In 1918 he had his first major success with his play Abraham Lincoln. He followed it with others in a similar vein, including Mary Stuart and Oliver Cromwell. In 1924, his Lincoln play was adapted for a two-reel short film made by Lee DeForest and J. Searle Dawley featuring Frank McGlynn Sr. as Lincoln, and made in DeForest’s Phonofilm sound-on-film process.

He had published poetry since The Death of Leander in 1906; the first volume of his Collected Poems was published in 1923. He also compiled anthologies and wrote literary criticism (e.g. Swinburne: an estimate (1913)), and later became manager of Birmingham Repertory Theatre. He was married to Daisy Kennedy, the ex-wife of Benno Moiseiwitsch.
Papers relating to John Drinkwater and collected by his stepdaughter are held at the University of Birmingham Special Collections.
John Drinkwater made recordings in Columbia Records’ International Educational Society Lecture series. They include Lecture 10 – a lecture on The Speaking of Verse (Four 78rpm sides, Cat no. D 40018-40019), and Lecture 70 John Drinkwater reading his own poems (Four 78rpm sides, Cat no. D 40140-40141). Drinkwater died in London in 1937. He is buried at Piddington, Oxfordshire, where he had spent summer holidays as a child. (Wikipedia)

• Keywords: Theatre – Rare
• Language: English
• Inventory Number: 100262AB

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