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.