Taber, Gladys (1899–1980)

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Taber, Gladys (1899–1980)

American poet, novelist, short-story writer, essayist, and columnist. Born Gladys Leonae Bagg on April 12 (though most sources cite April 12, the Social Security Index cites April 24), 1899, in Colorado Springs, Colorado; died on March 11, 1980, in Hyannis, Massachusetts; daughter of Rufus Mather Bagg and Grace Sibyl (Raybold) Bagg; Wellesley College, B.A., 1920; Lawrence College, M.A., 1921; graduate study at Columbia University, 1931–33; married Frank Albion Taber, Jr., in 1922; children: Constance Anne Taber .

Selected fiction:

Late Climbs the Sun (1934); Tomorrow May Be Fair (1935); The Evergreen Tree (1937); A Star to Steer By (1938); Long Tails and Short (short stories, 1938); This Is for Always (1938); Nurse in Blue (1943); The Heart Has April Too (1944); Give Us This Day (1944); Give Me the Stars (1945); The Family on Maple Street (1946); Daisy and Dobbin: Two Little Seahorses (juvenile, 1948); When Dogs Meet People (short stories, 1952); Spring Harvest (1959); One Dozen and One (short stories, 1966).

Selected nonfiction:

Harvest at Stillmeadow (1940); Especially Spaniels (1945); Stillmeadow Kitchen (1947); (with Ruth Kistner) Flower Arranging for the American Home (1947); The Book of Stillmeadow (1948); Especially Father (1949); The First Book of Dogs (juvenile, 1949); The First Book of Cats (juvenile, 1950); Stillmeadow Seasons (1950); (with Barbara Webster) Stillmeadow and Sugarbridge (1953); Stillmeadow Daybook (1955); Mrs. Daffodil (1957); What Cooks at Stillmeadow: The Favorite Recipes of Gladys Taber (1958); Stillmeadow Sampler (1959); The Stillmeadow Road (1962); Another Path (1963); Gladys Taber's Stillmeadow Cookbook (1965); Especially Dogs … Especially at Stillmeadow (1968); Flower Arranging (1969); Amber: A Very Personal Cat (1970); My Own Cape Cod (1971); My Own Cookbook: From Stillmeadow and Cape Cod (1972); Country Chronicle (1974); The Best of Stillmeadow: A Treasury of Country Living (1976); Harvest of Yesterdays (autobiography, 1976); Conversations with Amber (1978); Still Cove Journal (1981).

Selected other writings:

Lady of the Moon (play, 1928); Lyonnesse (poetry, 1929).

Gladys Taber was born in 1899 in Colorado Springs, Colorado, the second daughter of Grace Raybold Bagg and Rufus Mather Bagg, a descendant of a Massachusetts Puritan family that included both Cotton and Increase Mather. Taber began writing early, penning a historical novel at age nine and poetry at ten. She attended Appleton High School in Appleton, Wisconsin, before receiving a bachelor's degree at Wellesley College in 1920. Upon graduation, she returned home to Appleton, where she taught English at Lawrence College while earning a master's degree there in 1921. She married a fellow teacher, Frank Albion Taber, Jr., in 1922 and gave birth to daughter Constance. Though she became a freelance writer in 1932, Taber also taught English at Randolph Macon Women's College in Lynchburg, Virginia, during the academic year 1925–26, and creative writing at Columbia University from 1936 to 1943.

She published a collection of poetry, Lyonnesse, in 1926, and her first novel Late Climbs the Sun (1934) was favorably reviewed in The New York Times. By then the Tabers, with Gladys' sister and her sister's two children, had moved to Stillmeadow, a 17th-century farmhouse in the Connecticut countryside, which would become her inspiration for numerous books and articles about country living. The early years on the farm were lean and full of hard work, including keeping a large garden and raising cocker spaniels, all of which was recounted in her books. Harvest at Stillmeadow (1940) was her initial collection of essays on day-to-day country living, working, and meditation, and included her observations on life. The Book of Stillmeadow (1948) and Stillmeadow Seasons (1950) followed. Taber also published books on such topics as raising cocker spaniels and flower arranging, as well as cookbooks, historical and romance novels, and children's books. Especially Father (1949) is a biography of her impetuous father.

In addition to contributing more than 200 short stories to periodicals in the United States and abroad, Taber wrote columns for women's magazines. From 1938 to 1958, she wrote "Diary of Domesticity" for the Ladies' Home Journal, where she also served as an assistant editor from 1946 to 1958, and after that authored "Butternut Wisdom" for Family Circle. Taber published her autobiography Harvest of Yesterdays in 1976. She died on March 11, 1980, in Hyannis, Massachusetts; a book about her home on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, Still Cove Journal (1981), was published posthumously.