Harley Granville Granville-Barker was born in London in 1877. At the age of fourteen, he began his professional career in the theatre as an actor and by 1904, had been appointed manager of the Royal Court Theatre in London, introducing the public to the plays of George Bernard Shaw, Henrik Ibsen and Maurice Maeterlinck. His productions of Shakespeare were revolutionary for their use of naturally spoken dialogue. He also directed several of his own plays, including The Voysey Inheritance, Waste, and The Madras House. During the First World War, he served in the Red Cross in France before undertaking military intelligence work. From 1923 until 1946, he wrote prefaces to the plays of Shakespeare, interpreting the plays from the perspective of the director. In 1930, Granville-Barker was appointed to the Clark Lectureship at Trinity College, Cambridge and in 1937, was appointed lecturer at Oxford University. During the Second World War, he travelled to the United States, where he was a visiting professor at Yale and Harvard universities. He died in Paris in 1946.
From the guide to the Harley Granville-Barker collection, 1917, (Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge)
