Martin Julius Esslin OBE (6 June 1918 – 24 February 2002) was a Hungarian-born British producer, dramatist, journalist, adaptor and translator, critic, academic scholar and professor of drama, known for coining the term "theatre of the absurd" in his 1961 book The Theatre of the Absurd.
[1] Born Pereszlényi Gyula Márton in Budapest, Esslin moved to Vienna with his family at a young age.
[4] Ahmad Kamyabi Mask criticized Esslin for a purported "colonialist" quality of this title for the Avant-garde theater.
[5][6] However, his work inspired other playwrights such as Samuel Beckett, Arthur Adamov, Jean Genet, and Harold Pinter (as well as Ionesco).
[2][8] Keble College, Oxford maintains a special collection of over 3000 of his personal items, including his own works and books by other prominent dramatists, and the student drama society is named after him.