William Winter (July 15, 1836, Gloucester, Massachusetts – June 30, 1917) was an American dramatic critic and author. In 1958, Winter would move to New York City to pursue a career as a writer where he would stay for the remainder of his life. During his time in New York, Winter would work as a sub-editor for newspapers such as The Saturday Press, or as a drama critic of the New York Tribune.

Biography

William Winter was born on July 15, 1836, in Gloucester, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1857. Known for his Romantic poetry, Winter also wrote theater criticism, essays, and brief biographies. By 1854 Winter had published a collection of verse and worked as a reviewer for the Boston Transcript. He relocated to New York in 1856 and became assistant editor of literary and social commentary weekly, The Saturday Press, in print intermittently from 1858-1866. Winter became a regular at the center of Greenwich Village's Bohemian hotspot, Pfaff's, where artists such as Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Winslow Homer, Edwin Booth, Adah Isaacs Menken, Ada Clara, Horatio Alger Jr, met. In 1860 Winter married Scottish poet and novelist Elizabeth Campbell, raising their five children in Staten Island, New York.In the 1880s he began publishing biographies of thespians like the Jefferson family and Edwin Booth. Winter opposed the modernist theater of playwrights like Ibsen, and maintained that drama should be a moral force. His 1912 The Wallet of Time offers a fascinating retrospective look at the development of nineteenth-century theater; in the preface, he states that "[a] ruling purpose of my criticism has been... to oppose, denounce, and endeavor to defeat the policy which, in unscrupulous greed of gain, allows the Theatre to become an instrument to vitiate public taste and corrupt public morals" (xxiv). Winter's work on New York's theatrical scene details the careers, pursuits, and tastes of the major players and plays. He encouraged actors and writers to acknowledge the "use of a power manifestly greater in modern society than it ever was before in the history of civilization... and, if possible, to exert a beneficial influence on the mind of the rising generation, -- the generation that will support the Drama, determine its spirit, and shape its destiny". He died in New Brighton, Staten Island on June 30, 1917, after a bout of angina pectoris. He was buried at Silver Mount Cemetery.

Archives

Winter left two significant archives of biographies and essays on stars like Edwin Booth and Sir Henry Irving, in addition to career papers documenting his work as a writer and critic. Part of his archive was purchased by theatre and film producer and collector Messmore Kendall, who donated his collection of William Winter's papers and books along with Harry Houdini's archive to the University of Texas at Austin, where it is now available for research at the Harry Ransom Center. His enormously prolific legacy is also preserved at the Folger Shakespeare Library's Robert Young Collection on William Winter. In 1886, in commemoration of the death of his son, he founded a library at Staten Island Academy in Stapleton, New York.

Works

His writings include: He has edited, with memoirs and notes: