Edwin Thomas Booth's most famous role was Hamlet. He is portrayed in costume for that part. This (1917) bronze sculpture of Edwin Thomas Booth is by Edmund Thomas Quinn.

Quinn's sculptures received public praise after he exhibited at his Philadelphia alma mater, the National Academy of Design in 1891, and at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1895. He exhibited at the National Arts Club in 1912, and by 1913, his sculpture of a nymph was purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 1915, he was awarded the Silver Medal at the Panama Pacific Exposition, held in San Francisco.

Quinn's work was shown in national exhibitions of sculpture and at Knoedler Galleries and Gimpel & Wildenstein in New York. He was a member of the National Academy of Design from 1920 and president of the Municipal Art Society in 1921. He was considered among the most celebrated artists of his time, along with Daniel Chester French, Solon Borglum, William Glackens and Robert Henri.

Quinn received a commission in 1925-26 to create the bronze busts of Edwin Booth and James Kent for the New York University Hall of Fame of Great Americans (now Bronx Community College) The hall, designed by Stanford White, is on a 630-foot colonnade adjoining the Gould Memorial Library. In 1928, Quinn received a commission to create a bust of his friend the artist James McNeil Whistler. Later that year, Quinn was given a commission for a bust of composer Victor Herbert to be erected in Central Park.

His works are preserved in the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Brooklyn Museum of Art; Brooklyn Borough Hall; Kings Mountain Battle Monument; Poe Park, Pittsburgh Athletic Club; Vicksburg National Military Park, Gramercy Park, New York University, Williamsport, PA (John Howard Statue); New Rochelle, NY (WWI Monument); and at other institutions. The subjects Quinn sculpted included many noted Americans: Cass Gilbert, Francis Wilson, Edwin Markham, Clayton Hamilton, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Edgar Allan Poe, Edwin Booth as Hamlet, Walt Whitman, Henry Clay, Brander Matthews, James McNeil Whistler, James Stephens, Victor Herbert, James Kent, Albert Sterner, and Marie Sterner.

The wide recognition of Quinn's work did not exempt him from personal tragedy. His first attempted suicide was in 1929, but he was saved by an observant police officer. In September of that same year, he was found drowned in the bay off of Governors Island.

William Tecumseh Sherman recalled at Delmonico's Restaurant in New York 35 years later, that he used to sit outside the theater as a young lieutenant and listen to the applause for Booth. In 1856, Booth returned to the East. He first appeared in New York at Burtop's New Theatre. Booth performed Hamlet at Niblo's Gardens, then New York's leading theatre and was successful enough that his engagement was extended. In 1861, he went to England and acted in London. In December of 1862, he played at the Academy of Music his first performance in Brooklyn. He appeared in Julius Ceasar (1864) in which he and his brothers John Wilkes and Junius Brutus Jr. appeared together for the only time. In 1864, he began a long run (100 nights) of Hamlet in the Winter Garden Theatre in New York. (This role was posthumously immortalized in a Gramercy Park, NYC – sculpture by Edmond Thomas Quinn – opposite the Players Club – of Booth in the role of Hamlet.) Booth went into a one-year retirement after learning that his brother had assassinated Lincoln. In 1866, he returned as Hamlet to the Winter Garden and was well received. By age 34, he was the most popular actor in the United States.

Booth began to produce shows and he invested in theatres. He controlled the Winter Garden for three years, but it burned down. In 1868, he built the Booth Theatre at 6th Avenue and 23rd Street. Unfortunately the money went out faster than it came in, and he had mortgaged the theatre. The stage was neglected and his plays were badly mounted. In 1873, he retired from the theatre's management, and in 1874, he filed for voluntary bankruptcy. His theatre was sold, but it retained his name, against his wishes.

Booth was thrown from his carriage in Cos Cob, CT, in 1875 and badly injured. He never fully regained use of his right arm. He went to London in 1880 and appeared at the Lyceum Theatre in the role of 'Othello.' He returned with his ill wife in 1881, but she died later that year. In 1882, he returned to Europe and played in London, Dublin and other British cities. As always, the critics hailed him. Back in New York, he continued to perform, but to much smaller crowds. In 1891, he appeared as Shylock, but his performance was called 'feeble and inadequate.' At an appearance in Hamlet at the Academy of Music in Brooklyn, he was cheered, although his acting was again weak. In 1888, he gave his house on Gramercy Park to the Players Club. He became its first president and kept an apartment there until his death. His was an unhappy life plagued by insanity, drinking and depression (which had afflicted his father, second wife and his brother, the assassin). He was once America's foremost actor.