Walter D. Edmonds is a writer of historical fiction, both novels and short stories. His most important work constitutes a chronicle of upstate New York, primarily the Mohawk Valley region, spanning roughly 125 years beginning with the time of the American Revolution and ending with the early automobile age.

Born Walter Dumaux Edmonds in Boonville, New York, he was educated at the Cutler School in New York City; Saint Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire; The Choate School in Wallingford, Connecticut; and Harvard University (A. B., 1926). In 1929, he married Eleanor Livingston Stetson (who died 22 February 1956). They had three children: Peter Bulkley Edmonds, Eleanor L. Edmonds Cogswell, and Sarah M. Edmonds Randall. In 1956, he married Katharine Baker-Carr. He now resides in Concord, Massachusetts. He holds honorary doctorates from Union College (1936), Rutgers (1940), Colgate (1947), and Harvard (1952).

Though by age twelve he had begun to write of life around the family home in...