1900 Autograph Letter Signed by William Henry Edwards, Famed Naturalist.

“Shaksper not Shakespeare”

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A late-in-life ALS from William Henry Edwards (1822–1909), famed naturalist, entomologist, and coal titan of West Virginia. Edwards here writes, over fifty years later, to his friend “Bidwell” from Edwards’ home “Bellefleur” in Coalburg, West Virginia.¹

Edwards enquires about a mutual friend who has recently died and discusses his own health:

I have seen that our old friend Devereux died last of Feby. Can you tell me what was the matter that carried him off? He wrote a long letter on the 13th Feby… Yet on the 23rd he died. One of the family sent a [indistinct] paper with an account of the funeral, but nothing was said of the disease .. I shall be 78 on 15th this month. Probably you are a year or two older. My health is good…

The letter concludes, in part, with Edwards mentioning his book Shaksper not Shakespeare, published in the same year this letter was penned. Edwards’ book argues that the actor Shaksper was a different person than the playwright William Shakespeare. Edwards writes: “I have amused and busied myself for last 5 years with my book on Shaksper. The sale issues on 21 March.”

“In 1864 Edwards founded the Ohio and Kanawha Coal Company to develop coal fields being opened in the Kanawha Valley of West Virginia. In 1869 he moved his family to their new estate at Coalburgh, West Virginia. ... In 1868 Edwards began publishing The Butterflies of North America, a quarto pamphlet series of descriptions and illustrations of North American species that were gathered into three volumes (1874, 1884, and 1897). ... The Butterflies of North America, evaluated by contemporaries as “probably the most important faunistic work on Butterflies that has ever appeared” (Entomologist’s Monthly Magazine 33 [Apr. 1897]: 93), is still held in high esteem.” (ANB) Edwards collection of butterflies was purchased by the Carnegie Institution of Pittsburgh.

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