Edith Oliver (August 9, 1913 – February 23, 1998) was an American theater and film critic who contributed to The New Yorker magazine from 1947 to 1993.
The Conference’s founder, George White, described her this way, "She was packaged like the quintessential elderly lady that a Boy Scout would help across the street, except that she drank martinis, smoked cigarettes and could, on occasion, have a mouth like a sailor.
An aspiring stage actress, she landed small parts in radio plays that included Gangbusters, Crime Doctor and the Philip Morris Playhouse.
Oliver began working part-time for The New Yorker magazine in 1947, as a nonfiction reader and editor in the book review department, while continuing one day a week as a casting director for the Biow [advertising] Agency.
She reviewed movies for five years, and then theater for 32 years—mostly off-Broadway, but sometimes Broadway as well—while continuing to run the magazine’s book department.
Known for her “toughness and her love of theater”[6] Oliver came to be “among the most influential voices covering off Broadway theater.”[7] She was “an astute and open minded reviewer who was the first to recognize and champion such playwrights as David Mamet, Christopher Durang, and Wendy Wasserstein.”[8] Playwright Thornton Wilder wrote to her, “Your immense usefulness did not proceed from your ‘championing’ the new theater, beating the drum, ‘torch-bearing’, but simply from your writing so well, -- quietly, firmly, faithfully reporting what you saw.
There is no persuasion equal to that fidelity.”[9] Playwright Edward Albee said of her: “She was tough, she was honest, and she didn't write her reviews before she saw the play.