The SS Runic. From Melbourne to London. The World’s Polite Entertainers : Entertainment in aid of the Liverpool Seamen’s Orphanage Fund. Programme. (12 July, 1901)

A$450 · Offered by Douglas Stewart Fine Books

[At sea : on board SS Runic, July 1901]. Folio bifolium (330 x 200 mm), roneo-printed in violet on the first side only, on re-purposed faint-ruled writing paper; with three satirical line-drawn illustrations; light horizontal fold, some toning, but overall well preserved. An unrecorded shipboard programme that features the names of several colonial stage performers, both professional and amateur. SS Runic , the White Star Line Jubilee-class steamliner, was launched on 25 October 1900. Between 1901 and 1914 she made continuous runs on the Liverpool–Cape Town–Sydney/Melbourne route. The present shipboard programme for an evening of entertainment presented by passengers on 12 July 1901 was printed during her second return voyage (her fourth voyage in total) from Australia to the UK. The concert organiser and stage manager was the popular vaudeville singer and dancer Ernest Sivroni (his name appears at bottom right); both he and his music hall partner, Amy Silvini, appear among the performers listed on the programme. Other performers include minstrel-comedian Charlie Fanning (often billed at the time as Sydney s favourite comic ); Melbourne soprano Miss Pauline Heymanson; Melbourne amateur thespian Alfred Tullett; and minstrel-comedian Alf Lawton.

• Binding: Hardcover

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