Walter D. Edmonds


Walter "Wat" Dumaux Edmonds was an American writer best known for historical novels. One of them, Drums Along the Mohawk, was adapted as a Technicolor feature film in 1939, directed by John Ford and starring Henry Fonda and Claudette Colbert.

Life

Edmonds was born in Boonville, New York. In 1919 he entered The Choate School in Wallingford, Connecticut. Originally intending to study chemical engineering, he became more interested in writing and worked as managing editor of the Choate ‘’Literary Magazine‘’. He graduated in 1926 from Harvard, where he edited ‘’The Harvard Advocate‘’, and where he studied with Charles Townsend Copeland. He married Eleanor Stetson in 1930.
In 1929, he published his first novel, ‘’Rome Haul‘’, a work about the Erie Canal. The novel was adapted for the 1934 play ‘’The Farmer Takes a Wife‘’ and the 1935 film of the same name.
‘’Drums Along the Mohawk‘’ was on the bestseller list for two years, second only to Margaret Mitchell‘s famous 1936 novel ‘’Gone with the Wind‘’ for part of that time. Edmonds justifies his approach to historical accuracy in the preface:
Edmonds eventually published 34 books, many for children, as well as a number of magazine stories. He won the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award in 1960 and the Newbery Medal in 1942, for ‘’The Matchlock Gun‘’, and the National Book Award for Young People's Literature in 1976, for ‘’Bert Breen's Barn‘’.
When Eleanor died in 1956, Walter married Katherine Howe Baker Carr, who died in 1989. Walter Edmonds died in Concord, Massachusetts, in 1998.

Work

Novels

Juvenile novels

Autobiographical novel

Short story collections

  • Mostly Canallers *
  • In the Hands of the Senecas
  • Seven American Stories
  • ''The Night Raider and Other Stories''

Non-fiction

* Novels Rome Haul, Drums Along the Mohawk, Chad Hanna, Young Ames and the short story collection Mostly Canallers were published as Armed Services Editions during WWII.