[Robert] Burns Mantle

Mantle, [Robert] Burns (1873–1948), critic and editor. Born in Watertown, New York, he became a drama critic in 1898, serving on Denver and Chicago newspapers before coming to New York in 1911 as critic for the Evening Mail. In 1922 Mantle moved to the Daily News, where he remained until 1944. Although he was the author of American Playwrights of To‐day (1929) and Contemporary American Playwrights (1938), he is best remembered as the originator and editor of the Best Plays series, an annual anthology of plays and statistics, which he continued to edit from 1920 until shortly before his death. His writings were warm and reasonable, without any of the ostentation of some of his fellow critics.