Arthur Schnitzler (15 May 1862 – 21 October 1931) was an Austrian author and dramatist. He is considered one of the most significant representatives of Viennese Modernism. Schnitzler’s works, which include psychological dramas and narratives, dissected turn-of-the-century Viennese bourgeois life, making him a sharp and stylistically conscious chronicler of Viennese society around 1900.

Schnitzler's Jewish upbringing and the sexual content of his works made them controversial or banned in his time and beyond.

The son of a prominent Hungarian-Jewish laryngologist Johann Schnitzler and Luise Markbreiter, Schnitzler was born in Vienna in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He began studying medicine at the local university in 1879, received his doctorate of medicine in 1885, and worked at Vienna's General Hospital, but ultimately abandoned medicine in favour of writing.

His works were often controversial for their frank description of sexuality. Sigmund Freud, in a letter to Schnitzler, confessed, "I have gained the impression that you have learned through intuition — though actually as a result of sensitive introspection — everything that I have."