STEDMAN, EDMUND CLARENCE an American poet and critic, was born of Puritan stock at Hartford (Conn.), Oct. 8, 1833. He was rusticated after two years at Yale, and was not allowed to return. In 1871, however, the college conferred on him the B.A. and M.A. degrees, and in 1895 the degree of LL.D. Clarence Stedman became connected with the New York Tribune, and in 186o went to the World as editor, later becoming its war correspondent. A clerkship in Washington formed an interlude, but much of his life was spent in trading on the New York Stock Exchange, of which he edited a history (5905). He edited a volume of Cameos from Landor (with T. B. Aldrich, 1873), A Library of American Literature (II vol. 1887 9o), The Works of Edgar Allan Poe (with G. E. Woodberry, 10 vol. A Victorian Anthology (1895) and an American Anthology (1900). In addition to a large number of ephemeral reviews, he published Victorian Poets (1875), Poets of America (1885), and The Nature and Elements of Poetry (1892), books which show the poet's critical insight, technical knowledge, and high standards of workmanship. His most enduring place in lit
erature, however, is due to his poetry—the deep serious note of his war lyrics or the whimsical fantasy of "Pan in Wall Street." The title of his rather conventional first book, Poems, Lyrical and Idyllic (1860), sounds the keynote of his work. Always a lover of beauty, he refused to be swayed from his ideals by the contemporary popularity of such jeux d'esprit as "The Diamond Wedding." As a result he has to his credit a group of fine and true lyrics such as the "Creole Lover's Song" and some com mendable longer poems—Alice of Monmouth; An Idyl of the Great War (1863), The Blameless Prince (1869), and the elab orate commemorative ode on Hawthorne (read before the Har vard Phi Beta Kappa Society, 1877). He died in New York on Jan. 18, 1908.