Sir Henry Irving Autographs, Memorabilia & Collectibles

Known for his melodramatic acting and lavish productions, SIR HENRY IRVING (1838-1905) was the leading British actor of his day and, as a theatre manager, turned the struggling Lyceum Theatre into the country's premiere theatre. Irving was a merchant's clerk when he received a 100-pound in 1856 inheritance that allowed him to buy his own wigs and props and buy into an amateur production of Romeo and Juliet. He trouped in stock theatre for 10 years, appearing in over 330 plays and most of Shakespeare's theatrical repertoire, before finding his first real success in a 1866 play in London, Hunted Down. His career took off in 1871, when he appeared in The Bells at the Lyceum. Irving became one of the company's stars and, in 1878, became the Lyceum's manager, a position he held until 1902. He also hired Ellen Terry as his leading lady that year, and the two went on to form one of the most famous partnerships in theatrical history. The plays he produced were sometimes short on literary merit, but he made up for questionable material with spectacular (and murderously expensive) sets, music and lighting, and audiences on both sides of the Atlantic rewarded him with packed houses. The Lyceum's fortunes began to go south in 1897 with a financially disastrous play about Peter the Great, put on by his son Lawrence, and an equally disastrous fire that destroyed the theatre's stored scenery. Illness kept him from touring the next year, and the Lyceum's box office take suffered for it. He died, still on tour, after a 1905 performance of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's Becket. He was knighted in 1895, the first actor to receive this honor. Irving was a lifelong friend of Dracula author Bram Stoker, who became the Lyceum's business manager and gave the young author his first real exposure to high society.