Gladys Bagg Taber (1899 - 1980) produced a large body of work during her lifetime. She wrote over 50 books, including fiction, nonfiction, cookbooks, children's books, plays, poetry and more. Her best loved books are her series about her life at Stillmeadow, her farm in the then rural country of Connecticut, as well as at Still Cove, her smaller home on Cape Cod. These were also the general topics for her three widely enjoyed magazine columns, first in Ladies Home Journal (1937 - 1957) and then in Family Circle (1959 - 1967). As she grew older, Gladys spent even more time on Cape Cod, as the house was all on one level. She also began a third series of columns entitled Still Cove Sketches, which were published weekly in The Cape Cod Oracle.
There are two additional columns which Gladys wrote although not every reader of her books today may be aware of them. In the Ladies’ Home Journal, she wrote a long-running column of Kitchen Remodels which our members still enjoy today. Kitchens that were featured included Stillmeadow’s, Still Cove’s, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne’s, Edna St. Vincent Millay’s, rural farm kitchens, those in student housing, etc.
The other lesser known column was printed in The American Antiques Journal and was entitled “Recipe of the Month, from America’s traditions, selected by Gladys Taber.” These were recipes from her cookbooks, often with a paragraph about the origin, which gives us another aspect of Gladys’ life.
Gladys Taber was also a prolific short story writer and published several collections of her stories. For almost 50 years her work could be found in almost every household in the United States. In addition to her published books and magazine columns, many of her stories, as well as essays, appeared in many other magazines and newspapers, including The Saturday Evening Post, Good Housekeeping, Redbook, Nation's Business, Farm Journal, Liberty, Family Circle, Country Home, Collier’s, MacLean’s, This Week, The War Cry, Cape Cod Compass, The New York Sunday News, McCall's, Woman’s Home Companion, Woman’s Day, The Writer, Cosmopolitan (which was a literary magazine in the 1930s and 1940s), Pictorial Review, The American Weekly, The American Magazine, Chatelaine (in Canada), The New England Galaxy, Australian Women’s Weekly, dog magazines, cat magazines and many more. She also was quoted in many books by other authors and is still quoted today in books written long after her death 40 years ago.
To learn more about Gladys Taber, please click the tab above, “More about Gladys”.