Gilder was born on February 8, 1844 at
Bordentown, New Jersey. He was the son of Jane (Nutt) Gilder and the Rev.
William Henry Gilder, and educated at his father's seminary in
Flushing, Queens. There he learned to set type and published the
St. Thomas Register. Gilder later studied law at
Philadelphia. During the
American Civil War, he enlisted in the state's Emergency Volunteer
Militia as a private in
Landis' Philadelphia Battery at the time of the
Robert E. Lee's 1863
invasion of Pennsylvania. After the
Confederates were defeated in the
Battle of Gettysburg, Gilder and his unit were mustered out in August. The death of his father, while serving as chaplain of the Fortieth New York Volunteers, obliged him to give up the study of the law. Under Gilder's editorship,
The Century became one of the most esteemed periodicals in the country and Gilder himself became influential enough that his biographer Herbert Smith referred to the 1880s as "the Gilder Age". He published the works of
William Dean Howells,
Henry James,
Mark Twain, and
Walt Whitman Gilder took an active interest in all public affairs, especially those which tend towards reform and good government, and was a member of many New York clubs. He was one of the founders of the
Society of American Architects, of the
Authors' Club, and of the
International Copyright League. He was a founder of the
Anti-Spoils League and a member of the
American Academy of Arts and Letters. He was a close friend of
George MacDonald, Scottish poet, author, and preacher. They collaborated in various ventures such as MacDonald's American lecture tour in the 1870s. Gilder received the degree of
LL.D. from
Dickinson College in 1883. As editor of
Century Gilder editorialized against
women's suffrage. He wrote that giving women the right to vote would destroy the "home woman" who was an anchor of family stability in a changing world. He regarded women as guardians of the nation's morality, and excluded anything from the magazine that would "corrupt" women. Gilder was a member of the
Simplified Spelling Board. He was a leader in the organization of the Citizens' Union, a founder and the first president of the Kindergarten Association, and of the
New York Association for the Blind. Gilder was chairman of the first Tenement House Commission in
New York City. During his service on the commission, he arranged to be called whenever there was a fire in a tenement house, and at all hours of the night he risked his health and his life itself to see the perils besetting the dwellers of the tenements, in order to make wise recommendations as to legislation that would minimize these perils. ==Family==