J. Hartley Manners

Born in London on August 10, 1870, J. Hartley Manners was a playwright of Irish family background who also spent part of his early career as an actor. Before becoming widely known as a dramatist, he performed on stage in Australia and Britain, experience that seems to have given his writing a strong feel for theatrical timing and audience appeal.

He is most closely associated with Peg o' My Heart, the 1912 play written for his wife, actress Laurette Taylor. The production became a major Broadway success and remains the work most often linked with his name. Manners went on to write many other plays, building a reputation as a prolific figure in popular theater on both sides of the Atlantic.

Manners died in New York on December 19, 1928. Today he is remembered less as an experimental writer than as a skilled and successful man of the theater whose biggest hit left a lasting mark on stage history.