author
Livingston Robert Shewell
1833–1904
Best remembered for a vivid stage melodrama that later became a novel and a silent film, this 19th-century American writer worked close to the theater world he knew so well. His career also included years as an actor, giving his stories an easy feel for drama, pace, and big-city spectacle.
1 Audiobook
The shadows of a great city: A romantic story
by Grace Miller White, Livingston Robert Shewell
About the author
Livingston Robert Shewell was born in Philadelphia in 1833 and died in Bristol, Pennsylvania, in 1904. Surviving records point to a long connection with the American stage: a later theatrical notice says he made his debut at Philadelphia's Chestnut Street Theatre in 1852, while family and catalog records confirm his life dates and Pennsylvania roots.
Shewell is chiefly associated with Shadows of a Great City, a drama published in 1884 and preserved by the Library of Congress. The work remained well known enough to be described in later editions as his "famous play," and it also inspired the 1904 novel The Shadows of a Great City: A Romantic Story, credited to Grace Miller White and Livingston Robert Shewell.
The scattered theater records that survive suggest he was more than a single-book author. Playbill and archive entries place L. R. Shewell in 19th-century productions both as a performer and in connection with stage works such as Valdberg! and Pearl of Savoy. Even from these fragments, he comes across as a practical man of the theater whose writing grew directly out of popular performance.