A lifelong Berkshire resident, Cornelia Brooke Gilder was educated at Vassar College and Cambridge University. She was cocurator of "A Walk in the Country: Inness and the Berkshires" at the Clark Art Institute in 2005. Her most recent work, Houses of the Berkshires: 1870-1930, coauthored with Richard S. Jackson Jr. (Acanthus Press, 2006), was named an honor book by Historic New England.