POEMS BY EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN:

STEDMAN, EDMUND CLARENCE. Born in Hartford, Connecticut, October 8, 1833; died in New York City, January 18, 1908. Mr. Stedman was for many years the foremost critic of America and exerted a great influence upon the country's poetry through his sympathetic interpretations and the far-reaching inspiration of his personal relations with poets. The activity of Mr. Stedman's life and the variety of his interests rebuke those who are content with a half expression of their talents. Stedman's youth was like that of many ambitious boys: he graduated at Yale, having taken first prize for a poem on "Westminster Abbey," and plunged into journalism, editing papers in small towns in New England. Emboldened to try his luck in New York City, he secured a place with Horace Greeley on the "Tribune" where "Osawatomie Brown" and other early poems were published. In 1860 he joined the staff of the "New York World," remaining as war correspondent until 1863. Here an entirely new phase was introduced into his life and one seemingly antagonistic to literature. He aided in the construction and financial affairs of the first Pacific Railway and so was led into Wall Street, where he remained as an active member of the Stock Exchange for nearly forty years. Mr. Stedman said himself that he entered Wall Street as a door to means and leisure to prosecute his literary works, a task in which he was assiduous to the hour of his death. Volumes of his own verse alternated with critical studies of English and American poets, and lectures at Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University, and other academic centers. He received the degree of L.H.D. from Columbia and of LL.D. from Yale.

This biographical note is reprinted from The Little Book of American Poets: 1787-1900. Ed. Jessie B. Rittenhouse. Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1915.

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