author
Maxwell Anderson
1888–1959
A major voice in 20th-century American theater, this Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright brought moral conflict, political debate, and poetic language to the stage. His best-known works include What Price Glory, Both Your Houses, Winterset, and The Bad Seed.
1 Audiobook
Gods of the lightning; Outside looking in
by Maxwell Anderson, Harold (George Harold) Hickerson, Jim Tully
About the author
Born in Atlantic, Pennsylvania, on December 15, 1888, Maxwell Anderson grew up in a family that moved often because his father was a Baptist minister. He studied at the University of North Dakota and later earned a master's degree from Stanford University, then worked as a teacher and journalist before turning fully to playwriting.
Anderson became widely known in the 1920s, especially after What Price Glory?, written with Laurence Stallings, became a Broadway hit. Over the years he built a remarkable career as a dramatist, lyricist, poet, and screenwriter, and he was especially admired for bringing verse drama into modern American theater. His plays often wrestle with freedom, justice, conscience, and the price of power.
He won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Both Your Houses and also earned major critical recognition for works such as Winterset and High Tor. Anderson died in Stamford, Connecticut, on February 28, 1959, but his writing still stands out for its strong ideas, theatrical energy, and willingness to treat the stage as a place for both argument and poetry.