poet, critic, and editor, whose writing was popular in the United States during the late 19th century.

Stedman attended Yale, from which he was expelled, and became successively a newspaper proprietor and a stockbroker, writing all the while. As a critic Stedman wrote of contemporary authors in Victorian Poets (1875) and Poets of America (1885); he also edited the works of Edgar Allan Poe and Walter Savage Landor and was an important figure in the New York literary world. His Poetical Works appeared in 1875, Hawthorne and Other Poems in 1877, Lyrics and Idylls, with Other Poems in 1879, and Mater Coronata in 1900.