Along with George Bernard Shaw, John Galsworthy, and Harley Granville-Barker, he was a major exponent of Edwardian "New Drama".

Hankin's admiration of the work of George Bernard Shaw led him to associate himself with the Stage Society and the Royal Court Theatre.

[2] Hankin was actively involved in running the Stage Society, a London theater group that was founded in part to avoid the Lord Chamberlain's censorship.

Hankin's plays never transferred to the West End, but they received regional productions, particularly at the Birmingham Rep. His plays were little performed after his death, the most notable exception being a 1948 revival of The Return of the Prodigal at the Globe (now Gielgud) Theatre featuring John Gielgud and Sybil Thorndike, with costumes by Cecil Beaton.

On a "dull, sultry, wet" June day in 1909, Hankin tied two seven-pound dumbbells around his neck and drowned himself in the River Ithon.

He left his wife a letter expressing his fear that he would "slip into invalidism," which he could not bear, and ended by telling her, "I have found a lovely pool in a river and at the bottom I hope to find rest.

His characters include types familiar to the Edwardian New Drama: autocratic men, crushed wives, spinster daughters, formidable dowagers.