![]() On such a night in the woods, they feel a strange link with the universe and a renewal of their own identity. The shadows on the snow are like etchings, and the only sound is the occasional cracking of an icy branch. My friends Helen, Vicky, and Olive grow restless after supper and decide to walk in the moonlit woods, even if the temperature is zero. “The Full Snow Moon is one of the loveliest perhaps the crystalline air itself affects her. This example shows the way she wove deeper thoughts in with food, friends, and life in the seventeenth-century Connecticut farmhouse she restored and maintained: She wrote beautifully-perhaps due to a lifetime of reading Keats. People who are interested in things are interesting, and Gladys Taber was very interesting! Nature, weather, restoring old houses, friendships, family, grandchildren, neighbors, recipes, wildlife, cats, dogs, education, technology. Like a good conversationalist, she didn’t spend too much time on any one topic. Her skill of course, but I think the key is that she mixed it up. So I spent a lot of time obsessing over what makes this one so very good? I love this kind of book, but am often disappointed. Gladys Taber was a brilliant writer who applied her craft to writing about everyday life. My best buddy handed this down to me, and I couldn’t be more grateful. The colored leaves fall like jewels from a broken necklace.” “Autumn rains are often as fierce as the assault of a legendary dragon. She died on Main Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis, Massachusetts at the age of 80. Gladys Taber had divorced her husband in 1946 and he later passed away in October 1964. Her final book, published posthumously, was Still Cove Journal (Lippincott, 1981). ![]() While a resident of Orleans, Taber contributed “Still Cove Sketches” to the Cape Cod Oracle. Having spent some summers on Cape Cod in Massachusetts, she decided to relocate to the town of Orleans where she would live out the remainder of her days. In 1960, her companion, Eleanor, died and Taber decided to abandon life at Stillmeadow. In 1959, she moved from Ladies’ Home Journal to Family Circle, contributing the “Butternut Wisdom” column until her retirement in 1967. She published more than 20 books related to Stillmeadow, including several cookbooks. Beginning with Harvest at Stillmeadow (Little, Brown, 1940), Taber wrote a series of books about her simple life in New England that possessed homespun wisdom dolled out with earthy humor and an appreciation for the small things. In the late 1930s, Taber joined the staff of the Ladies’ Home Journal and began to contribute the column “Diary of Domesticity.”īy this time, she had separated from her husband and was living at Stillmeadow, a farmhouse built in 1690 in Southbury, Connecticut, sharing the house with Eleanor Sanford Mayer, a childhood friend who was often mistakenly identified as her sister. She went on to write several other novels and short story collections, including Tomorrow May Be Fair ( Coward, 1935), A Star to Steer By (Macrae, 1938) and This Is for Always (Macrae, 1938). Taber won attention for her first humorous novel, Late Climbs the Sun (Coward, 1934). She began her literary career with a play, Lady of the Moon (Penn), in 1928, and followed with a book of verse, Lyonesse (Bozart) in 1929. Taber taught English at Lawrence College, Randolph Macon Women’s College in Lynchburg, Virginia, and at Columbia University, where she did postgraduate studies. The following year, she married Frank Albion Taber, Jr., giving birth to their daughter on July 7, 1923. She returned to her hometown and earned a master’s in 1921 from Lawrence College, where her father was on faculty. Gladys graduated from Appleton High School and enrolled at Wellesley College, receiving her bachelor’s degree in 1920. During her childhood, she moved frequently as her father accepted various teaching posts until they finally settled in Appleton, Wisconsin. An older sister, Majel, had died at the age of six months while a younger brother Walter died at 15 months. Her parents were Rufus Mather Bagg, who could trace his ancestry back to Cotton Mather, and the former Grace Sibyl Raybold. A prolific author whose output includes plays, essays, memoirs and fiction, Gladys Taber (1899 – 1980) is perhaps best recalled for a series of books and columns about her life at Stillmeadow, a 17th-century farmhouse in Southbury, Connecticut.īorn Gladys Bagg on Apin Colorado Springs, Colorado, she was the middle child and only one to survive to adulthood.
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