St John Hankin Biography

British dramatist, born in Southampton, the son of a schoolmaster, educated at Oxford University. He became a journalist and dramatic critic with the aim eventually of writing for the stage, an ambition first fulfilled when his The Two Mr Wetherbys was performed in London in 1903. There followed The Return of the Prodigal (1905), The Cassilis Engagement (1907), and The Last of the de Mullins (1908), three plays highly critical of the upper classes and influenced by the earlier, more realistic work of Shaw. By the time Hankin committed suicide in a fit of depression, he had established himself with Granville-Barker and Galsworthy as one of the more interesting of the Edwardian era's socially concerned dramatists.