Booth and the Spirit of Lincoln: A Story of a Living Dead Man

Philadelphia/London: J.B. Lippincott Company. Near Fine in Very Good dj. 1925. First Edition. Hardcover. [minimal shelfwear to book, a tight copy with just a touch of soiling to the eges of the text block; the jacket is lightlly soiled, and has a few edge-nicks and a small triangular pull-tear at the right edge of the front panel]. Historical fiction, of a sort -- although historical fantasia (or alt-history fiction) would be a little closer to the mark. In this version of events, John Wilkes Booth makes his escape "over the mountains to the West, to Mexico, China, even the South Seas, ever driven on by the danger of recognition, pursued, also, by a Voice, a presence from which he cannot flee." Eventually, it seems, he's converted from an embittered assassin to "a lover of Lincoln through understanding with the spirit of the martyred president." The author, whose real name was Julia Burnelle Smade Babcock, was an Arkansas-born novelist, essayist and journalist who wrote a sort of unofficial trilogy of books centering around Abraham Lincoln, of which this was the last. (The preceding titles were "The Soul of Ann Rutledge" and "The Soul of Abraham Lincoln.") .