WARNER, Charles Dudley, author, born in Plainfield, Massachusetts, 12 September, 1829. His father, a man of culture, died when Charles was five years old. During his early boyhood he had access to few books except biblical commentaries, biographies of austere divines, and some Calvinistic treatises, but he was fond of study, especially of the classics, and in 1851 was graduated at Hamilton with the first prize for English. He has embodied his recollections of his youth in New England in one of his most popular works, "Being a Boy" (Boston, 1877), which is partly an autobiography, and a faithful and amusing picture of rural life in a Calvinistic New England neighborhood fifty years ago. While in college he contributed to the "Knickerbocker" and "Putnam's Magazine." He also prepared a "Book of Eloquence" (Cazenovia, New York, 1853), which displayed a critical and appreciative judgment. He joined a surveying party on the Missouri frontier in 1853, became familiar with varied phases of frontier life, returned to the east in 1854, and was graduated at the law department of the University of Pennsylvania in 1856. He then practised his profession in Chicago, Illinois, till 1860, when he returned to the east and be came assistant editor of the "Press," an evening newspaper in Hartford, Connecticut, of which he assumed control in the following year. In 1867 the "Press" was consolidated with the "Courant," of which he became a co-editor. He spent fourteen months abroad in 1868-'9, and gained reputation by a series of foreign letters to that journal, which were widely copied. He subsequently travelled extensively in Europe and the East, on his return resumed the editorship of the "Courant," and in 1884 became a co-editor of "Harper's Magazine." His most important work in connection with that monthly has been a series of papers beginning with "Studies in the South," followed by " Mexican Papers" and "Studies in the Great West," in which the educational, political, and social condition of these states are carefully discussed, lie has also interested himself in the treatment of social science topics in Connecticut, and was for several years a member of the State commission on prisons, and of the National prison association. He has delivered lectures before educational and other societies, which for the most part have been pleas for a higher individual and national culture, for an enlargement of our collegiate courses, and an improvement in their methods. These include an address at Bowdoin on "Higher Education" (Brunswick, Maine, 1871), a series of lectures on "Literature in Relation to Life," delivered before the law department of Yale (1884), address at the unveiling of Paul Gerhardt's statue of Nathan Hale in the capitol at Hartford (1887), that before the literary societies of Washington and Lee university, Lexington, Virginia, 1888, and one on "Shelley" (1888). He was an at-dent Abolitionist during the anti-slavery agitation, and has been a Republican since the formation of the party. Yale gave him the degree of A. N. in 1872, and Dartmouth the same honor in 1884. His career as an author began in 1870. In the spring and summer of that year he wrote for the "Courant" a series of sketches, lightly and humorously depicting the experiences of an amateur gardener, into which were woven caustic comments on some of the foibles of social and political life. These papers were published in book-form, with an introduction by Henry Ward Beecher, under the title of " My Summer in a Garden," and met with immediate favor (Hartford, 1870). It was followed by "Saunterings," reminiscences of the author's travels on the European continent (Boston, 1870), and "Backlog Studies" (1872), a collection of essays, a part of which first appeared in "Scribner's Monthly." This book is a panegyric of the kindly influences of the fireside circle, and a discussion of current topics of social life, in the peculiar vain of humor that characterizes the writer. His other works in-chide contributions to the magazines on social, artistic, and literary topics; " Baddeck, and That Sort of Thing" (1874) ; "My Winter on the Nile" (Hartford, 1876) ; "In the Levant" (1877) ; "In the Wilderness" (Boston, 1878) ; "Captain John Smith" (New York, 1881); " Washington Irving," in the "Men of Letters " series, of which he is editor (Boston, 1881.) ; " Roundabout Journey " (1883) ; " Their Pilgrimage," a serial, depicting the exploits of an author and an artist on a tour of the Atlantic coast and inland northern and southern watering-places (New York, 1886); and "On Horseback" (l888). He has also published, with Samuel L. Clemens, "The Gilded Age" (1873).