Harley Granville-Barker

Born in London in 1877, Harley Granville-Barker built an unusually wide-ranging career in the theatre. He acted onstage from a young age and became known not just as a dramatist, but also as a producer, director, and influential critic.

His plays include The Voysey Inheritance, Waste, and The Madras House, works admired for their intelligence, social observation, and fresh dramatic form. Alongside his own writing, he played an important part in early twentieth-century stage reform, working to move British theatre toward more thoughtful, modern production styles.

Granville-Barker also became an important Shakespeare commentator, and his Prefaces to Shakespeare were widely respected for their practical insight into performance. He died in 1946, but his reputation has lasted as that of a major theatre thinker as well as a gifted playwright.