SOURCE: Horn, Barbara Lee. “Life and Career.” In Maxwell Anderson: A Research and Production Sourcebook, pp. 7-12. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1996.

In the following essay, Horn discusses Anderson's life and works, commenting on what contributions he made to the American theatre from 1920 through 1950.

Maxwell Anderson was to the American theatre what Schiller was to the German or Rostand to the French theatres. If not their equals, he contributed to the American stage a romantic drama exalted in spirit and idealistic in aim. Although adept at writing the drama of realism, he held that nothing less than poetic tragedy would suffice great theatre. He brought to the theatre of the twentieth century an obsolete form of verse drama, and, more important, made it an artistic and commercial success on some half-dozen occasions between 1930-1950. Almost alone in the American theatre since Eugene O'Neill, he attempted to rise beyond pedestrian...