SOURCE: Quinn, Arthur Hobson. “The Dramas of George Henry Boker.” PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association 32, no. 2 (1917): 233-66.

In the following essay, Quinn provides an overview of Boker's career as a playwright.

Notwithstanding the pre-eminence of George Henry Boker in our dramatic literature before the Civil War, an eminence not seriously threatened in America except by Robert Montgomery Bird, no accurate account of his life has been published and nowhere is available even a trustworthy statement of the productions of his plays.¹ Several of his dramas remain unpublished in manuscript and even their existence is known apparently to but few. I shall not attempt here to go into detail concerning his life, but will endeavor to give the facts concerning his plays that have come to light in the course of my examination of the Boker manuscripts kindly placed at my disposal by Mrs. George Boker, the...