Early Life and Education Elizabeth Lawrence Gilman was born in 1905 into a family prominent in both New York society and the literary world. Her father, Arthur Lawrence Gilman, was descended from the Lawrence family of Flushing, and her mother, Elizabeth Wright Walter, came from a New England family of professional and academic distinction. She attended Smith College, graduating in 1927.

Marriage and Career In 1936 she married Malcolm Evelyn Anderson, a Princeton graduate and member of the editorial staff of The New Yorker. The marriage ended in divorce in 1940. Elizabeth worked for a time in the publishing world and later at F. A. O. Schwarz in New York City. She was known for her intelligence, humor, and participation in the city’s artistic and intellectual life.

Civic and Cultural Interests In later years she devoted herself to environmental and community causes, dividing her time between New York and the Adirondacks. She was active in the National Audubon Society, the Adirondack Mountain Club, the Society for the Preservation of the Adirondacks, the Saranac Lake Free Library, and the Saranac Lake Village Improvement Society. She was also a member of The Bohemians, a New York musicians’ club with a long and distinguished history.

Later Years and Death Elizabeth Gilman spent her final years in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. She died in 2006 at the age of 101, remembered for her commitment to conservation and the arts, and for a life that bridged the refined world of her Lawrence ancestors and the civic-minded modernism of the twentieth century.