Edmund Clarence Stedman

He studied two years at ; and an elaborate commemorative ode on Hawthorne , read before the Harvard Phi Beta Kappa Society in 1877 .

An idyllic atmosphere is the prevalent characteristic of his longer pieces, while the lyric tone is never absent from his songs, ballads and poems of reflection or fancy. As an editor he put forth a volume of ''Cameos'' from Landor (with TB Aldrich , 1874); a large Library of (selections from) American Literature (with Ellen M Hutchinson, 11 vols, 1888-1890); a ''Victorian Anthology'' (1895); and an ''American Anthology, 1787-1899'' (1900); the two last-named volumes being ancillary to a detailed and comprehensive critical study in prose of the whole body of English poetry from 1837, and of American poetry of the 19th century.

This study appeared in separate chapters in '' Scribner's Monthly '' now the '' Century Magazine '', and was reissued, with enlargements, in the volumes entitled ''Victorian Poets'' (1875; continued to the Jubilee year in the edition of 1887) and ''Poets of America'' (1885), the two works forming the most symmetrical body of literary criticism yet published in the United States. Their value is increased by the treatise on ''The Nature and Elements of Poetry'' (Boston, 1892) a work of great critical insight as well as technical knowledge.

Stedman edited, with Ellen M. Hutchinson, ''A Library of American Literature'' (eleven volumes, 1888-90); and, with George E. Woodberry , the ''Works of Edgar Allan Poe'' (ten volumes, 1895). After the death of Lowell , Stedman had perhaps the leading place among American poets and critics.

In 1904, Edmund Clarence Stedman was one of the first seven chosen for membership in the American Academy Of Arts And Letters .

LITERATURE

Stedman and Gould, ''Life and Letters of Edmund Clarence Stedman'' (two volumes, New York, 1910)

William Winter , ''Old Friends'' (New York, 1909)

REFERENCES

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Edmund Clarence Stedman