Excerpt from Retrospections of America, 1797-1811 On his retirement from the stage and return to England, Bernard began the preparation of his biography; and about a year before his death he completed the work, but, as his son tells us, in too voluminous a state for publication. His son was the late W. Bayle Bernard, who was born in Boston, Mass, in 1808, and died in Lon don, England, in 1875. He began life as an actor, but soon turned critic and dramatist, and was the author of the Nervous Man, the Dumb Belle, and His Lost Legs. For Hackett he wrote the earliest drama of Rip Van Winkle, and for Yankee Hill, Silsbee, and other American character actors, he wrote many other plays which entitle him to be considered one of the inventors of the Stage Yankee. After John Bernard's death, in 1828, Bayle Bernard selected and condensed from his father's autobiography the interesting Retrospections of the Stage, by the Late John Bernard, Manager of the American Theatres, and formerly Secretary of the Beefsteak Club. 2 vols. Lon don, Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, This work met with great and instant success, and is still high ly prized by all collectors of theatrical literature on both sides of the Atlantic. It was republished by Carter 85 Hendee, in Boston, in 1832, but both editions have been long out of print. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.