Stedman, Laura, 1881-1939

Laura Woodworth Stedman was born in 1881, the daughter of Frederick Stuart Stedman and Ellen Montague Douglas Stedman, and the granddaughter of banker, editor, and poet, Edmund Clarence Stedman. She was educated at private schools in New York City, including Arundell Academy and the Brackett School. Stedman served as literary secretary to her grandfather in the decade preceding his death in 1908 and, thereafter, as his literary executor. In 1908 Stedman contributed a bibliography to George M. Gould’s Concerning Lafcadio Hearn . Working with Gould again, she edited a two-volume edition of her grandfather’s letters, Life and Letters of Edmund Clarence Stedman (1910). In 1916 she published a short appreciation of Bayard Taylor in The Mid-West Quarterly . The following year Stedman and Gould married, taking up residence in Atlantic City, New Jersey. After Gould’s death in 1922, Stedman remained in Atlantic City through 1930, in which census she is listed as a widow and an author. At the time of her death in 1939, Stedman was married to Milton Seabury Dees and resided in New York.

Laura Stedman: author and granddaughter of banker, editor, and poet, Edmund Clarence Stedman.