James Gibbons Huneker

Huneker, James Gibbons (1859?–1921), critic. Born in Philadelphia of Irish‐Hungarian parentage, he became a music critic before he was hired as a theatre reviewer for the New York Sun in 1902. Huneker immediately took up the cudgels for Ibsen and Shaw, two playwrights who were confusing and infuriating the more traditional critics. He wrote of Ibsen, “In his bones he is a moralist, in practice an artist.” Although he later was to have reservations about Shaw, he wrote the introduction to a 1906 edition of Shaw's collected criticisms and called him “jester to the cosmos and the most serious man on the planet.” He also warred against the prudery that infused so much contemporary dramatic criticism. In 1912 he left the Sun to write for the New York Times but eventually returned to the former. Brooks Atkinson called him “the best critic Broadway ever had.” Among his books, which ranged broadly and knowingly among all the arts, was Iconoclasts: A Book of Dramatists.

Quotes:

"All men of action are dreamers."

"Berlioz says nothing in his music, but he says it magnificently."