Maud Wilder Goodwin

Maud Wilder was born in Ballston Spa, New York, the daughter of John N. Wilder and Delia A. Wilder.[1] Her older sister Blanche, also a writer,[2] married lawyer Frederick P. Bellamy, the brother of writer Edward Bellamy.[3]

Goodwin's books were commercially successful,[4] and generally well-reviewed by critics. The Literary World found The Colonial Cavalier "very gay and charming,"[5] and Dolly Madison a "delightfully written, carefully gleaned biography".[6] Public Opinion found White Aprons to be "animated with fresh and absorbing interest."[7] "There is nothing specially startling in her plot of her situations," noted The Richmond Times-Dispatch about Richmond's novel, Four Roads to Paradise. "But she has endowed her characters with life and the ability to enjoy it; she has infused a strong dramatic element into her scenes; she has described her surroundings well, and she has given zest and animation to her conversations and dialogues."[8]

• "The Antislavery Legacy" (1893)[9]
• The Colonial Cavalier, or, Southern Life Before the Revolution (1895)[10]
• Dolly Madison (1896)[11]
• White Aprons: A Romance of Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia (1896, illustrated by Clyde O. DeLand)[12]
• The Head of a Hundred: Being an Account of Certain Passages in the Life of Humphrey Huntoon, Esq., Sometime an Officer in the Colony of Virginia (1897)[13]
• Fort Amsterdam (1897)[14]
• Flint: His Faults, His Friendships And His Fortunes (1897)[15]
• Open Sesame! Poetry and Prose for School-Days (1898–1890, 3 volumes, with Blanche Wilder Bellamy)[16]
• Historic New York During Two Centuries (1899, co-editor with Alice Carrington-Royce, Ruth Putnam, and Eva Palmer Brownell)[17]
• Sir Christopher: A Romance of a Maryland Manor in 1644 (1901)[18]
• Four Roads to Paradise (1904)[8][19]
• Claims and Counterclaims (1905)[20][21]
• Veronica Playfair (1910)[22]
• Dutch and Quakers: Part 1: Dutch and English on the Hudson (1919, with Sydney George Fisher)[23]
• Dutch and English on the Hudson: A Chronicle of Colonial New York (1921)[24]

A quote by Goodwin ("My dear, whenever you feel that it would relieve your mind to say something, don't say it") was included in the Chicago Woman's Club's calendar for 1905.[25]

Wilder married lawyer Almon Goodwin in 1879. They had daughter Miriam and Hilda,[1] and a son, Wilder.[26] Her husband died in 1905, and Goodwin died in 1935, at the age of 78, at her son's home in Greenwich, Connecticut.[27]