Autograph manuscript signed of his essay "Dramatic Criticism

N.p., n.d.. From the Bart Auerbach Collection. 35 pages, 4to (10 ¾ × 8 ½ inches), a working draft written in pencil with very extensive revisions by the author (virtually all of the crossed out words and passages are still readable); the pages mounted on heavy gauze for binding, gray wrappers lettered in black and gold on front cover the covers slightly soiled and worn). A fine manuscript by American's first really significant modern theatre critic and an early champion of Eugene O'Neill. "Throughout the 1920s and 1930s Nathan was the most influential commentator on contemporary American drama, attracting hostility from controlling interests in the commercial theatre for his authoritatively iconoclastic denigrations of many productions. Among the playwrights he fostered were O'Neill, William Saroyan, Arthur Miller, and Sean 'Casey" (The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Literature in English).

Nathan's main point in this essay dealing with theatre criticism in America is that "of all the forms of criticism, dramatic criticism is essentially and perhaps correctly, the most personal" (p. 8) and that "the actor and the dramatic critic best serve their roles when they filter them through their own personalities" (p. 11). In the course of the essay Nathan comments on various drama critics, including Max Beerbohm, and mentions various playwrights, including Shaw, Schnitzler, Wedekind, Hauptmann, Sacha Guitry, Edmond Rostand, and O'Neill. Regarding America's foremost dramatist, Nathan writes, in a section dealing with Puritanical criticism (p. 23): "I predicted to Eugene O'Neill, the moment I laid down the manuscript of his pathological play Diff'rent (1920), the exact manner in which, two months later, the axes fell upon him."

After graduating college (Cornell) in 1904, Nathan began his career as a drama critic in New York. In 1908 he became associated with The Smart Set, where he was co-editor with H. L. Mencken from 1914-23. In 1924 he founded The American Mercury with Mencken, serving as an editor until 1930 and "establishing himself as one of the literary arbiters of the period" (The Oxford Companion to American Literature).

This essay was undoubtedly written for a periodical appearance - possibly for The Smart Set; it was collected in Nathan's The Critic and the Drama (NY: Knopf, 1922), forming Chapter Five in that book.