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.
Life and career
Early years and civil service career
Walkley was born at Bedminster, Bristol, the only child of Arthur Hickman Walkley, a bookseller, and his wife, Caroline Charlotte, née Bingham. He was educated at Lord Weymouth's School, Warminster, and then gained an exhibition in mathematics at Balliol College, Oxford, matriculating in October 1873. In January 1874 he migrated to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, having been elected a scholar there. He took a first class in both the mathematical moderations (1875) and the final school of mathematics (1877).
In June 1877 Walkley successfully entered an open competitive examination for appointment to the civil service; he was appointed a third-class clerk in the secretary's office of the General Post Office. On 29 March 1881 he married Frances Sarah Maud Antrobus Eldridge (1858–1934). There was one daughter of the marriage.
Walkley's abilities were recognised by the civil service. He was promoted successively to the grade of second-class clerk (1882), first-class clerk (1892), principal clerk (1899) and assistant secretary, in charge of the telegraph branch (1911). He represented the Post Office at three important international gatherings: in 1897 he was secretary of the British delegation to the Washington Postal Congress, in 1898 secretary to the Imperial Penny Postage Conference, and in 1906 a delegate to the Rome Postal Congress.
An obituary notice in The Times stated that Walkley could have risen to higher official positions, but chose not to pursue them, preferring to devote his energies to dramatic criticism. Nevertheless, he took a pride in the execution of his official work, which The Times considered "set a standard which has served as a model to the younger generation in the Civil Service". 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.
Writer and critic
Walkley began his literary career as a reviewer of books in weekly and monthly periodicals. He turned to theatrical reviewing, inspired by the work of his friend the theatre critic William Archer. He contributed general articles to a weekly review, The Speaker during the 1880 and 1890s, and when the London evening newspaper The Star was founded in January 1888 he was appointed its theatre critic. One of his colleagues was Bernard Shaw who wrote music criticism under the pen name "Corno di Bassetto". On one occasion Walkley filled in for Shaw and signed himself "Bono di Corsetto", an early instance of a certain frivolous side to his writing – something that made many readers underestimate his fundamental seriousness. 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."
The Times
In September 1899 Walkley contributed his first review to The Times; six months later he was appointed as the paper's drama critic. He contributed in 1900 and 1901 to Literature, a weekly offshoot of The Times, and, from 1902 to its successor, The Times Literary Supplement. In February 1903 he gave three lectures at the Royal Institution, which he printed as Dramatic Criticism (1903). He reprinted some of his articles for Literature and the TLS as his fourth book, Drama and Life (1907).