William Winter (author)

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William Winter
William Winter, circa 1915
Born	(1836-07-15)July 15, 1836 Gloucester, Massachusetts, United States
Died	June 30, 1917(1917-06-30) (aged 80) New Brighton, Staten Island. United States
Burial place	Silver Mount Cemetery, Staten Island, United States
Spouse	Elizabeth Campbell (m. 1860)
Children	5

William Winter (July 15, 1836, Gloucester, Massachusetts – June 30, 1917) was an American dramatic critic, journalist, essayist, poet, and author. Starting in the 1850s, he pursued a career as a writer in New York City and was associated the Bohemian movement.^[1]

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 to 1866.^[2] He also worked as a drama critic for the New York Tribune.^[3]

Winter became a regular at the center of Greenwich Village's Bohemian hotspot, Pfaff's, among writers and artists such as Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Winslow Homer, Edwin Booth, Adah Isaacs Menken, Ada Clara, and Horatio Alger Jr.

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.^[3] He was buried at Silver Mount Cemetery.

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.^[4]

His enormously prolific legacy is also preserved at the Folger Shakespeare Library's Robert Young Collection on William Winter.^[5]

In 1886, in commemoration of the death of his son, he founded a library at Staten Island Academy in Stapleton, New York.^[6]

His writings include:

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)

Wikiquote has quotations related to William Winter.

Wikisource has original works by or about:
William Winter

Wikimedia Commons has media related to William Winter (author).

• William Winter Papers at the Harry Ransom Center
• William Winter Library at the Harry Ransom Center
• Robert Young Collection on William Winter at the Folger Shakespeare Library
• Brief biography and two poems
• Works by William Winter at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about William Winter at the Internet Archive
• Works by William Winter at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)