[5] He graduated from Harvard in 1917, and worked at the Springfield Daily News and the Boston Evening Transcript, where he was assistant to the drama critic.

[5] Atkinson, stepping into the role of major progressive thinker and writer of his time, was a strong supporter of the Works Progress Administration, particularly the new Federal Theatre Project, Roosevelt's attempt in the midst of the unemployment and poverty of the Great Depression to extend welfare support to out of work theater professionals and to create a theater responsive to the American public in range and diversity.

Atkinson wrote favorably about the Chinese Communist Party and against the Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek, which he saw as reactionary and corrupt.

After visiting Yan'an, he wrote that the Communist movement's political system was best described as an "agrarian or peasant democracy, or as a farm labor party.

[6][7] After the end of the war, Atkinson stayed only briefly in New York before he was sent to the Soviet Union to serve as a press correspondent in Moscow.

He is given much credit for the growth of Off-Broadway into a major theatrical force in the 1950s, and has been cited by many influential people in the theater as crucial to their careers.

[citation needed] After his retirement, he became a member of The Players who organized a tribute dinner for Atkinson's 80th birthday, which was attended by Arthur Miller, Elia Kazan, and other prominent actors and playwrights.