Gladys Taber

Gladys Taber was a prominent American author, born in Colorado Springs, Colorado on April 12, 1899. She was the middle child of Rufus Mather Bagg and Grace Sibyl Raybold, and experienced a peripatetic childhood as her father moved around for teaching positions. Eventually, the family settled in Appleton, Wisconsin, where Taber graduated from high school before attending Wellesley College. She earned her bachelor's degree in 1920 and returned to her hometown to obtain a master's from Lawrence College in 1921.

Taber's literary career began in 1928 with the play 'Lady of the Moon' and the book of verse 'Lyonesse' in 1929. She gained recognition for her first humorous novel, 'Late Climbs the Sun', published in 1934. Over the next few years, she wrote several other novels and short story collections, including 'Tomorrow May Be Fair' and 'A Star to Steer By'. In the late 1930s, Taber started contributing to the Ladies' Home Journal with the column 'Diary of Domesticity'. By this time, she had separated from her husband and was living at Stillmeadow, a farmhouse in Southbury, Connecticut, with her childhood friend Eleanor Sanford Mayer.

In 1940, Taber published 'Harvest at Stillmeadow', the first in a series of books about her life in New England. These books offered homespun wisdom, earthy humor, and an appreciation for the small things in life. She wrote more than 20 books related to Stillmeadow, including cookbooks. In 1959, she moved to Family Circle, contributing the 'Butternut Wisdom' column until her retirement in 1967. After Eleanor's death in 1960, Taber left Stillmeadow and relocated to Orleans, Massachusetts, where she contributed 'Still Cove Sketches' to the Cape Cod Oracle. Her final book, 'Still Cove Journal', was published posthumously in 1981. Taber divorced her husband in 1946, and he passed away in October 1964. She died on March 11, 1980, in Cape Cod Hospital, Massachusetts, at the age of 80.