author
Alfonso Josephs Sheafe
b. 1875
A dance teacher and early-20th-century writer, he is best remembered for lively guides to social dancing, especially the Boston. His surviving books suggest a practical instructor who wanted readers to learn both style and technique.
1 Audiobook
The fascinating Boston : how to dance and how to teach the popular new social favorite
by Alfonso Josephs Sheafe
About the author
Alfonso Josephs Sheafe was born in 1875. The clearest surviving records found here connect him with dance writing and instruction rather than a broad literary career.
Sheafe is known for The Fascinating Boston: How to Dance and How to Teach the Popular New Social Favorite, published in 1913. The book presents the Boston as both an elegant social dance and a teachable skill, and its title page describes him as a "Master of Dancing" and as the translator and editor of Zorn's Grammar of the Art of Dancing.
Library and public-domain listings also credit him with editing or translating editions of Friedrich Albert Zorn's Grammar of the Art of Dancing, showing that he helped bring formal dance instruction to English-language readers. No clearly verified portrait turned up in the sources I checked, so a profile image is not included.