Henry Taylor Parker

Who was Henry Taylor Parker?

Henry Taylor Parker, "known for many years largely by his initials H. T. P.", was an American theater and music critic. Time said Parker's "reviews were famed" and for "29 years he had been Boston's oracle on theatre and music." The magazine also said Parker was a "great critic" as was Philip Hale who died around the same time. Parker was "one of the most distinguished critics of his era, respected for his long, thoughtful, and open‐minded reviews." His biographer said “This remarkable little man of fine perceptions, with his dark eyes burning quizzically in a head bent forward with a sleuthing thrust and emphatic in its nods, was a giant among critics.”

Parker attended Harvard University but was said to have left in displeasure over the number of courses in drama and literature available to him. He worked for several papers newspapers as a correspondent until the 1900s when he became drama and music critic for the New York Globe. In 1905, Parker returned to his native Boston and worked as a critic for the Boston Evening Transcript for the rest of his life.

Parker worked during the era when Boston – a city founded by Puritans – had extreme censorship laws causing many artistic works to be "Banned in Boston". But the theater scene in Boston remained vital helped by "excellence of its theatrical criticism as exemplified by the renown of Henry Taylor Parker and Henry Austin Clapp." In 1922, Parker wrote the book Eighth Notes: Voices and Figures of Music and the Dance.