…but radio killed the recitation star.
That’s the verdict of “Reciters: Kind, Genial, Harmless Creatures — Their Day Is Done.” Time (11 June 1923). What is odd about the article is that it reviews two presumably recently-published recitation anthologies while simultaneously eulogizing the demise of the practice of recitation: “But the reciter of our forefathers — the reciter magnificent — the lady of the awe-inspiring brow and graveyard contralto who tore “The Raven” to tatters on the slightest provocation, the cadaverous youth who was so comic delivering “Farmer Corn-tassel at the County Fair” — these, with the hansom-cab-driver and the professor of penmanship who drew little birds with flowing scrolls in their beaks, are rapidly passing into oblivion. Alas!”
The two anthologies reviewed are:
Pertwee, Ernest, ed. The Comic and Humourous Reciter. London: G. Routledge, n.d.
Potter, Cora Urquhart, comp. My Recitations. Philadelphia: J. P. Lippincott Co., 1886. [This is the first edition bibliographic information; the anthology was republished a number of times; Google Books has a limited preview of a reprint of the first edition, including the table of contents.]
The reviewer sums up the contents of Potter’s book thus: “Death, Villainy, Madness, the Grave here find their own. The soldier of the Legion is dying in Algiers, Sir Ralph the Rover visits the Inchcape Rock, “Charge Chester, charge!” “‘We are lost!’ the captain shouted as he staggered down the stairs.” Less well known morceaux deal with Blood (in quantity), with Wicked Atheists, with the Last Few Remarks of Pious Children.”
Ernest Pertwee (who appears to have also published under the name “Guy Pertwee”) edited a number of other recitation anthologies:
The Reciter’s Treasury of Verse, Serious and Humourous, with an Introduction on the Art of Speaking. London: George Routledge & Sons & Swan Sonnenschein & Co; New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1907. Available at the Internet Archive.
The Art of Speaking. London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co.; New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1902. [Pertwee is described in this book as "Professor of Elouction, City of London School".] Available at the Internet Archive.
[Co-edited with Alfred Perceval Graves] The Reciter’s Treasury of Irish Verse and Prose. London: George Routledge & Sons; New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., [1915]. Available at the Internet Archive.
Pertwee also seems to have published under the name “Guy Pertwee” (he appears as “Ernest Guy Pertwee” in some Google Books and library catalogue entries). Facing the title page of Guy Pertwee’s Scenes for Acting from Great Novelists (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1913) (available at the Internet Archive) is an advertisement for “New Reciters,” which includes Scenes from Dickens for Amateur Acting, “arranged by Guy Pertwee, and Edited by Ernest Pertwee,” so I guess he kept his actor and professor personae distinct. (Mrs. Ernest Pertwee also seems to have had her hand in the recitation anthology trade: she is listed in the same advertisement as the author of A Second Book of Duologues and Dialogues for Recitation — unless this another nom de plume of Ernest’s!
Cora Urquhart Potter is better known as Cora Brown Potter (1857-1936), a well-known actress in the later 19th century. A brief biography of her can be read at Shakespeare and the Players.
Posted by Jason 
