Horace Elisha Scudder (1838-1902) was a prolific American man of letters and editor. He graduated from Williams College in 1858, taught school in New York City, and subsequently, removing to Boston, he devoted himself to literary work. He is now best known for his children's books and the editorship he held of The Atlantic Monthly. He published the Bodley Books (1875-87) and was also an essayist, and produced large quantities of journalism that was printed anonymously. He was a correspondent of Hans Christian Andersen, and biographer of James Russell Lowell. He also edited The Riverside Magazine. Scudder also prepared, with Mrs. Taylor, the Life and Letters of Bayard Taylor (1884) and was series editor for the extensive American Commonwealths Series for Houghton Mifflin. His works include: Seven Little People and Their Friends (1862), The Doings of the Bodley Family in Town and Country (1875), The Bodleys Telling Stories (1877), The Bodleys on Wheels (1878), The Bodleys Afloat (1879), Mr. Bodley Abroad (1880), The Bodley Grandchildren and Their Journeys in Holland (1882), Noah Webster (1882), Boston Town (1883), The English Bodley Family (1884) and The Viking Bodleys (1885). --This text refers to the Paperback edition.