Charles Warren Stoddard

Charles Warren Stoddard
Born	August 7, 1843 Rochester, New York, U.S.
Died	April 23, 1909 Monterey, California, U.S.
Resting place	San Carlos Cemetery, Monterey, Monterey County, California, U.S.

Charles Warren Stoddard (August 7, 1843, – April 23, 1909) was an American author and editor.

Charles Warren Stoddard was born in Rochester, New York on August 7, 1843. He was descended in a direct line from Anthony Stoddard of England, who settled at Boston, Massachusetts, in 1639.

While he was still a child, he moved with his parents to New York City. In 1855, the family migrated to San Francisco, California when his father found a job at a mercantile firm. Stoddard was 11 and was immediately smitten with the city and, as he recalled, its "natural tendency to overdress, to over-decorate, to overdo almost everything". In 1857, joined his ill brother Ned on a restorative trip East, where they stayed at their grandfather's farm in western New York. He rejoined his family in San Francisco by 1859.

Stoddard began writing verses at a young age amid the growing literary climate of California. His first published work saw print in The Golden Era for September 1862 under the pseudonym "Pip Pepperpod". He later recalled how he clandestinely slipped his contribution into the Era's mailbox without anyone knowing: "No member of my family suspected that I was so bold as to dream of entering the circle of the elect who wrote regularly every week for the chief literary organ west of the Rocky Mountains". His writings were well received and were later published as Poems by Charles Warren Stoddard. Poor health compelled him to give up his plans for a college education. He tried a career on the stage without success.

In 1864 he visited the South Sea Islands and there wrote his Idyls, letters he sent to a friend who had them published in book form. "They are," wrote William Dean Howells, "the lightest, sweetest, wildest, freshest things that were ever written about the life of that summer ocean." He made four other trips to the South Sea Islands, and wrote his impressions in Lazy Letters from Low Latitudes and The Island of Tranquil Delights.

Stoddard visited Molokai several times and became well acquainted with Father Damien–a Catholic saint since 2009–who ministered to the lepers there. Stoddard's The Lepers of Molokai, according to Robert Louis Stevenson, did much to establish Father Damien's position in public esteem. In 1867, soon after his first visit to the South Sea Islands, Stoddard was received into the Catholic Church. He told the story of his conversion in a small book, A Troubled Heart and How it was Comforted, of which he said: "Here you have my inner life all laid bare."

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