WILLIAM WINTER DRAMA CRITIC BIOGRAPHER SIX LINE POEM SIGNED STATEN ISLAND 1880 for Sale

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WILLIAM WINTER DRAMA CRITIC BIOGRAPHER SIX LINE POEM SIGNED STATEN ISLAND 1880 For Sale

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WILLIAM WINTER DRAMA CRITIC BIOGRAPHER SIX LINE POEM SIGNED STATEN ISLAND 1880:
$280.65

WILLIAM WINTER (1836-1913) DRAMA CRITIC, POET AND BIOGRAPHER. A SIX LINE POEM IN HIS HAND SIGNED UNDER THE TEXT DATING IT NEW BRIGHTON STATEN ISLAND JUNE 3RD 1880. FOLDS O/W VGWINTER, WILLIAM. Born in Gloucester, Massachusetts, 1836; died in New York City, June 30, 1917. Mr. Winter was through most of his long life, a dramatic critic, although he started public life as a lawyer. The lure of literature, however, was too strong for him and in 1859 he came to New York and cast in his lot with a struggling little band of writers who afterward became the prominent men of letters of their day. After a period of work for the \"Saturday Press\" and other papers, he became the dramatic critic of the \"New York Tribune,\" a position which he continued to hold for forty years. He had a particular passion for Shakespearean drama and numbered among his close friends all the great Shakespearean actors of his day. Mr. Winter was a voluminous writer both in dramatic criticism and poetry, varying these occupations with charming books of English travel and brief personal studies of his friends. The Jeffersons, Henry Irving, Mary Anderson, Edwin Booth, and others were among the subjects of his delightful memoirs.
The unofficial biographer of the Pfaff’s crowd, William Winter was born in coastal Massachusetts, and his mother died when he was young. Winter attended school in Boston; he also went to Harvard Law School but decided not to practice (\"William Winter, 19). By 1854 he had already published a collection of verse and worked as a reviewer for the Boston Transcript; he befriended Pfaffian Thomas Bailey Aldrich after reviewing a volume of his poetry. He relocated to New York in 1856 \"because he believed [the city] offered the best field for writers\" (Levin 153). His arrival coincided with the beginning of the flourishing of Pfaff’s. In late 1859, Winter became a so-called \"sub-editor\" for the Saturday Press (Lause 79). For the Saturday Press, Winter reviewed theatrical performances in the column, \"Dramatic Feuilleton,\" which was previously written by James Fitz O\'Brien. Winter became a regular at Pfaff’s during this period, where he, along with the other Bohemians, went \"precisely to escape the tedious presence of the general public\" (Whitley 104). It was also here he met Whitman and its other frequenters whom he later described in Old Friends (1909). He also wrote introductions and brief biographies for the editions of the collected works of Pfaff’s regulars like Fitz James O’Brien, John Brougham, and George Arnold. According to scholar Joanna Levin, Winter\'s memoirs display the \"spectacular design of the Bohemian\'s self-staging\" (19).
Winter was very much connected to the Bohemian circle who gathered at Pfaff\'s. Several contemporaries recognized his presence there including the author of Henry Clapp\'s obituary in the New York Times, who included Winter among the \"Knights of the Round Table\" of the \"lions of Bohemia\" (NYT, April 26, 1890, 2). Scholars, too, have confirmed his involvement at Pfaff\'s with Tice Miller describing him as a \"regular\" at the establishment and Mark Lause noting that Winter was one of the men at Pfaff\'s who was quite willing to join in tormenting Walt Whitman over his Leaves of Grass (Miller 16; Lause 53). In fact, according to Miller, by December 1859, Winter was accepted by most Pfaffians, with the notable exception of Walt Whitman who \"found his friendship and talents distasteful\" (70).
In 1860, Winter married Scottish novelist Elizabeth Campbell; the couple raised their five children in Staten Island, New York. Winter moved on to work as a dramatic and literary critic for the Albion and Harper’s Weekly, as well as Horace Greeley’s Tribune, where he built a national reputation as a stage historian and theater critic (W. Eaton, “William Winter”). After the Civil War several Pfaffians, including \"William Winter and Thomas Bailey Aldrich turned their backs upon Bohemianism and embraced standards of taste we call \'The Genteel Tradition\'\" (Miller 17). From 1856-1870, Winter served as the managing editor of the New York Weekly Review, to which he also contributed several pieces (\"William Winter,\" 19). 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. 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\" (xxv). Winter died in July 1917. He was memoralized in a New York Times obituary as being \"perhaps the only American author who may truly be said to have built up a great reputation as a critical essayist on theatrical performances and the history of the stage\" (\"William Winter,\" 19).
\"rank, deadly pessimism… a disease, injurious alike to the stage and to the public.\" William Winter on Ibsenism and the new Realism movement.\"The Ibsen movement… impressed me, from the beginning, as unhealthful and injurious. The province of art, and especially of dramatic art, is beauty, not deformity; the need of the world is to be cheered, not depressed; and the author who avows, as Ibsen did, that he goes down into the sewers, -whatever the purpose of his descent into those insalubrious regions, -should be left to the enjoyment of them.\" William Winter in Mansfield\'s biography
Winter, William [Mercutio] (1836-1917) American journalist, poet and the most influential and widely read critic of his era. He was born in Gloucester, MA and educated at Harvard Law School. Winter abandoned a law career for a literary one. Influenced by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, he turned to poetry and reviewing books. He moved to New York in 1859, and cast his lot with a struggling little band of writers who afterward became the prominent men of letters of their day. This group of literary bohemians including Bayard Taylor and Walt Whitman and others met in Pfaff’s Cellar in New York in the 1850’s and Winter summed up his memories of them in Old Friends (1909).
He worked for a period as assistant editor and book reviewer for the Saturday Press. In 1860-1861 he wrote briefly for The Leader before taking charge of the Albion dramatic department (1861-1865), writing as Mercutio. In 1865 he replaced Edward H. House as chief critic for the New York Tribune, a post he held until his retirement in 1909, establishing himself as the foremost drama critic of his generation.
After he retired, he contributed articles to various magazines. The foundation of Winter’s critical beliefs was essentially Aristotelian, tempered with 19th century romantic idealism (later called ‘the Genteel Tradition’). His early criticism was learned, basically sound, and open-minded, but with the rise of realism in the 1880s he became increasingly unaccepting of new theatrical movements and was the often shrill leader of the anti-Ibsenites. He considered acting the primary art of the theatre and the standard drama preferable to modern plays. He regarded the theatre as a temple of art to elevate and inspire humankind, and rejected the notion that art should depict real life. To Winter, beauty and morality were inseparable in art, and Realism had banished both from the stage. He continued to promote not only the standards of writing he knew as a young man but also the methods of acting prevalent when he first attended plays.
Winter was respected by the theatre community. He was a guest of honor at the American Lambs, an informal supper club of top Broadway actors and theatre artists that met a 44th & Broadway and staged charity show. Critics and agents were, by charter, banned from membership in the club, but Winter was popular enough as both a friend of the theatre community and a wit that he was invited to their roasts.
Despite his insider status, he was apparently an incorruptible critic. Major J.B. Pond, a big booking agent and associate of Winter’s, recounted that he was approached by a theatrical manager, who asked if Winter was well-off. Pond replied, \"He’s not rich. How could he be, with only the recourses of his pen as his income, and with a family of sons and a daughter to educate?\" The manager then asked if Winter could be \"induced\" to write a good review of the show at the Union Square Theatre for $2,500. Pond told the manager that Winter could not be bought. Disappointed, the man manager fumed that he had already purchased a good review from the city’s next best critic for less than half as much.
Winter was more than just a critic. He was a professional fly-on-the-wall who made his living writing about the theatre people he knew and the theatre events of which he managed to be a part.
Winter prepared acting versions of Shakespeare’s plays for Edwin Booth and Augustine Daly. He wrote numerous books on theatre, including Other Days (1908), Old Friends (1909), and the two-volume The Wallet of Time (1913), as well as biographies of David Belasco, Edwin Booth, Joseph Jefferson, Richard Mansfield, and Ada Rehan. His penchant for composing memorial odes to dead actors earned him the nickname \"Weeping Willie.\" His more than 50 books provide a comprehensive record of the late-19th-century American stage.William Winter (July 15, 1836 – June 30, 1917) was an American dramatic critic and author.[1]Contents1 Biography2 Archives3 Works4 References5 External linksBiographyHe was born on July 15, 1836 in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Winter graduated from Harvard Law School in 1857.
William Winter wore many literary hats during his long, illustrious career: theater critic, biographer, poet, essayist, among them. He is known for his Romantic style poetry, and for his long career as an editor and writer for some of New York City\'s great papers.
Winter was a tour de force in the original Bohemian scene of Greenwich Village, going on to become one of the most influential men of letters of the last half of the 19th century and the pre-eminent drama critic and biographer of the times.[citation needed] Winter became the unofficial biographer of the Pfaff\'s Circle of Greenwich Village of which he was a part. The Pfaffians spawned the careers of such writers as Walt Whitman and Mark Twain.
By 1854 Winter had already published a collection of verse and worked as a reviewer for the Boston Transcript; he befriended Pfaffian Thomas Bailey Aldrich after reviewing a volume of his poetry. He relocated to New York in 1856. Winter became a regular at the center of Greenwich Village\'s Bohemian hotspot, Pfaff\'s, where artists, renegades, and radical thinkers of all kinds converged. This was where Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Winslow Homer, Edwin Booth, Adah Isaacs Menken, Ada Clara, Horatio Alger Jr and an endless list of the Bohemian crowd came to mix with the journalists and radical political thinkers of the times. It was where one came to explore a new counter-culture in the Village, a salon of the Civil War era where the unconventional literati would gather-a place where no topic was off limits and all eccentricities were embraced.
Winter was at the heart of this influential circle known as The Pfaffians who gathered weekly at the Vault at Pfaff\'s Beer Hall on Broadway and Bleeker. The Pfaff Bohemians would lay the foundation for Winter\'s entire life and career as both a poet and a writer. He later described some of his life as a young Pfaffian, describing the extraordinary scene and the many great minds he encountered in his biography Old Friends (1909). He also wrote introductions and brief biographies for the editions of the collected works of Pfaff\'s regulars like Fitz James O\'Brien, John Brougham, and George Arnold.
\"The vault at Pfaffs where the drinkers and laughers meet to eat and drink and carouse.\" —Walt Whitman
At Pfaff\'s, Winter quickly was embraced due to his great wit and writing talents, becoming the right-hand man to Henry Clapp Jr\'s circle of Pfaffian\'s. Clapp soon made him assistant editor and literary critic to one of the first truly Bohemian publications in America, the literary and social commentary weekly, The Saturday Press, in print from 1858-1866. Here is where Walt Whitman and Mark Twain published their earliest works, and was the main publication of the Pfaffian Circle.
In 1860 Winter married Scottish poet and novelist Elizabeth Campbell, raising their five children in Staten Island, New York.
Winter went on to a stellar writing and editorial career at some of New York City\'s most influential papers, working as a dramatic and literary critic for the Albion and Harper\'s Weekly, as well as Horace Greeley\'s Tribune for more than 40 years. His piercing wit and brilliant writing made him the leading stage historian and theater critic of the 19th century (W. Eaton, \"William Winter\").
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.[1] He was buried at Silver Mount Cemetery.
ArchivesWinter 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.[2]
His enormously prolific legacy is also preserved at the Folger Shakespeare Library\'s Robert Young Collection on William Winter.[3]
In 1886, in commemoration of the death of his son, he founded a library at the academy in Stapleton, New York.[4]
WorksHis 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)Wanders, the Poems of William Winters (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 editionLife 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)
WINTER, William, author, b. in Gloucester, Mass., 15 July, 1836. He was graduated at the Harvard law-school, but began his career as a journalist and literary and dramatic reviewer. As such he wrote for the New York journals, and contributed literary articles to various magazines. Since August, 1865, Mr. Winter has been attached to the New York “Tribune” as dramatic reviewer, and as such has secured for himself a high reputation. Within that time he has also written and delivered poems on numerous public occasions. Partly in the interest of his profession, Mr. Winter has made several visits to Europe. In 1886, in commemoration of the death of his son, he founded a library at the academy in Stapleton, Staten island, N. Y. Mr. Winter\'s publications 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); “Henry Irving” (New York, 1885); “The Stage-Life of Mary Anderson” (1886); “English Rambles and other Fugitive Pieces” (Boston, 1884); and “Shakespeare\'s England” (Edinburgh, 1886). He has edited, with memoirs and notes, “The Poems of George Arnold” (Boston, 1866); “Life, Stories, and Poems of John Brougham” (1881); and “The Poems and Stories of Fitz-James O\'Brien” (1881).