_Edmund Clarence Stedman._--Stedman’s services to literature as a critic and anthologist are doubtless of much greater importance than his own poetry; but neither the one nor the other may be disparaged. He was born at Hartford, Connecticut, in 1833, his mother (by her second marriage Mrs. J. C. Kinney, the friend of the Brownings) being a woman of educated taste and herself a poet. Entering Yale at the age of fifteen, Stedman showed ability in Greek and in English composition, and shortly gained a prize by his poem on “Westminster Abbey.” On account of a boyish prank he was compelled to leave college before the end of the course. Prior to the Civil War he was connected with _The Norwich Tribune_ and _Winsted Herald_, and for a time with _The New York Tribune_; in this he printed his “Tribune Lyrics” (among them “Osawatomie Brown”). From 1861 to 1863 he was war correspondent of the New York _World_; later he was assistant to Edward Bates, Attorney-General under Lincoln. His interest in the first Pacific railroad brought him into relations with Wall Street, where, in 1869, he became an active member of the New York Stock Exchange. Here he remained until 1900, an influential man of affairs, respected by financiers as well as literary men, amassing and enjoying the means which he desired for the pursuits of literature. He was a thorough patriot, an earnest advocate of international copyright, above all a steady labourer for the education of public taste. His lectures on “The Nature and Elements of Poetry,” delivered first at Johns Hopkins University, subsequently at the University of Pennsylvania, and again at Columbia, unfolded the dignity of a subject that is often regarded as a matter of indifference. By his “Victorian Anthology” (1895) he gave further evidence of the powers of selection displayed in “A Library of American Literature” (1888-1889), on which he collaborated with Ellen M. Hutchinson. His “American Anthology” (1901, etc.), several times reissued, contains selections from about six hundred American poets, with brief biographies, and is, to say the least, an indispensable volume to the general student of our literature. The present section of this Manual is much indebted to Stedman’s “Anthology.” One would hardly make too liberal an assertion in saying of Stedman that he was the most thoroughly read man of his time in the poetry of his own nation. It is possible that he was over generous in his recognition of the work of inferior authors; but let us not impute this to him as too serious a fault. Of the fifteen poems of his own to which he allowed admission in the “American Anthology” (sixteen, counting the “Prelude” to the volume), the best known are “The Discoverer,” “Pan in Wall Street,” and “The Hand of Lincoln.” He died on January 18, 1908.