Arthur Bingham Walkley

English writer

Arthur Bingham Walkley (17 December 1855 – 7 October 1926), usually known as A B Walkley, was an English public servant and drama critic. As a civil servant he worked for the General Post Office from 1877 to 1919, in increasingly senior posts; he did not seek the highest official positions, preferring to leave himself time and energy for his parallel career as a drama critic. As a journalist he worked with Bernard Shaw on The Star at the beginning of his newspaper career; he is probably best known for his twenty six years as theatre critic of The Times. He retired from the Post Office in 1919, and for the last six years of his life concentrated wholly on writing.

Walkley was born at Bedminster, Bristol, the only child of Arthur Hickman Walkley, a bookseller, and his wife, Caroline Charlotte, née Bingham. There was one daughter of the marriage. One of his juniors wrote, "He was frankly more interested in his literary than his official duties but what he had to do officially he did with distinction. In June 1919 Walkley retired from the civil service. He remained with The Star until 1900. Under the by line "Spectator" he wrote not only regular reviews but also occasional essays on the theatre in general. In 1892 Walkley published his first book, a collection of his theatre reviews. The Times said of it, "Reprints of dramatic criticism are, as a rule, rather unsatisfying reading. But an exception may well be made in favour of Mr. Walkley's Playhouse Impressions." A selection from his miscellaneous essays in The Speaker, The Star, and elsewhere was published as Frames of Mind in 1899. This too was well received: "It is pleasant to wander with a companion so well read and so apt of quotation, and Mr. Walkley has an original way of looking around him."