American author, born in Boston on the 16th of October 1838. After graduating at Williams College in 1858 he went to New York City, where he taught school for three years. His stories for children, Seven Little People and their Friends (1862), proved highly successful, and decided him to follow literature as a profession. His next work was Dream Children (1863). He edited The Riverside Magazine for Young People from 1867 till 1870, and published in its third volume Stories from My Attic (1869). In 1890 he succeeded T. B. Aldrich as editor of the Atlantic Monthly, and became a resident of Cambridge, MA. Among his most successful books for children are the Bodley Books (8 vols., 1875–87); Dwellers in Five Sisters Court; Children’s Book (1881); and a History of the United States (1884). In 1882 he published a monograph on Noah Webster, a historical biography of Washington in 1886, and a collection of essays in characterization and criticism entitled Men and Letters (1888). He was also the editor of the American Commonwealths series; of a collection of American Poems and Prose; and jointly with Mrs. Taylor, of the Life and Letters of Bayard Taylor (1884).—His brother, Samuel Hubbard Scudder, an American naturalist; born in Boston in 1837. After studying at the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard College he became assistant to Professor Louis Agassiz in the Museum of Comparative Zoölogy, and in 1864 was made custodian of the Boston Society of Natural History, of which he was president in 1880–87. In 1886 he became palæontologist of the United States Geological Surveys, which post he occupied as late as July 1889. Mr. Scudder devoted himself chiefly to entomology; was a member of the National Academy; officially connected with the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Academy of Arts and Sciences. He wrote a large number of entomological works, and many contributions to Smithsonian and learned society publications, besides an account of travel, entitled Winnipeg Country, or Roughing it with an Eclipse Party (1886). He died in 1911. See also “Landor as a Classic,” “A Vision of Peace” and “As Good as a Play.” (See authored articles: James Russell Lowell, Harriet Beecher Stowe.)
