Scudder, Horace Elisha

Horace Elisha (1838-1902), an American author. He was born in Boston, educated at Williams, and died in Cambridge. He started in life as a teacher and tried business but soon gave himself to writing. He was the author of several juvenile volumes including The Bodley Books, 1875-87. He was a contributor to the Atlantic and edited it 1890-8. He edited the American Commonwealths Series, and wrote, among other volumes, Noah Webster, a Biography, Men and Letters, and James Russell Lowell, a Biography. Mr. Scudder's greatest service to letters, but a service that can never be estimated, was a persistent and an able advocacy of literary wholes, juvenile classics, for school use. To this end he edited the Riverside Literature Series, an extended series of inexpensive volumes for use as school readers. The series includes not only the masterpieces of British and American authors, but Mother Goose and other nursery rhymes.