William Winter (author)

William Winter

William Winter (July 15, 1836—June 30, 1917) was an American dramatic critic and author.

Biography

Born in Gloucester, Massachusetts, Winter graduated from Harvard Law School in 1857. He then chose literature as his field of endeavor, and moved to New York City (1859), where he became literary critic of the Saturday Press, then (1861–65) of the New York Albion, and for more than 40 years (1865–1909) was a drama critic of the New York Tribune. He died in New York City in 1917 and was buried at Silver Mount Cemetery.

Brooks Atkinson, in his history of the American Theater Broadway, accused Winter of being an intolerant prude for denouncing modern dramatists like Henrik Ibsen and George Bernard Shaw, and foreign stars like Sarah Bernhardt and Eleanor Duse, for their personal lives. However, Atkinson credited Winter for having a remarkable memory, wherein he left a treasure trove of written descriptions of stars like Edwin Booth and Sir Henry Irving. To this one may add that Winter had some degree of common sense that was missing from many of the dramatists of his day. His review of the ever-popular drama East Lynne showed that he considered the work a piece of claptrap, which most people these days agree is a correct assessment.^{[citation needed]}

In 1886, in commemoration of the death of his son, he founded a library at the academy in Stapleton, New York.

Works

His writings include:

• The Convent, and other Poems (Boston, 1854)
• The Queen's Domain, and other Poems (1858)
• My Witness: a Book of Verse (1871)
• Sketch of the Life of Edwin Booth (1871)
• Thistledown: a Book of Lyrics (1878)
• The Trip to England (1879)
• Poems: Complete Edition (1881)
• The Jeffersons (1881)
• English Rambles and other Fugitive Pieces (Boston, 1884)
• Henry Irving (1885)
• The Stage Life of Mary Anderson (1886)
• Shakespeare's England (1888)
• Gray Days and Gold (1889)
• Old Shrines and Ivy (1892)
• Shadows of the Stage (1892, 1893, and 1894)
• The Life and art of Edwin Booth (1893)
• The Life and Art of Joseph Jefferson (1894)
• Brown Heath and Blue Bells (1896)
• Ada Rehan (1898)
• Other Days of the Stage (1908)
• Old Friends (1909)
• Poems (1909), definitive author's edition
• Life and Art of Richard Mansfield (1910)
• The Wallet of Time (1913)
• a Life of Tyrone Power (1913)
• Shakespeare on the Stage (two series, 1911–15)
• Vagrant Memories (1915)

He has edited, with memoirs and notes:

• The Poems of George Arnold (Boston, 1866)
• Life, Stories, and Poems of John Brougham (1881)
• The Poems and Stories of Fitz-James O'Brien (1881)

External links

• Brief biography and two poems