Odell Shepard (July 22, 1884 in Sterling, Illinois – July 19, 1967 in New London, Connecticut) was an American professor, poet, and politician who was the 86th Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut from 1941 to 1943.^[1] He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1938.^[2]

Shepard was born in Illinois. He graduated from Harvard University, and taught at the English department of Yale University. A professor of English at Trinity College in 1917–1946,^[3] he was a mentor to Abbie Huston Evans.^[4] He edited the works of Henry David Thoreau, Louisa May Alcott, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Shepard wrote a biography of Bronson Alcott, the father of writer Louisa May Alcott and one of the foremost Transcendentalists: Pedlar's Progress: The Life of Bronson Alcott, published by Little, Brown in 1937,^[5] for which he won the 1938 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.^[2]

His papers are held at Trinity College.^[3]

He died in 1967.

• 1938 Pulitzer Prize for his Pedlar's Progress: The Life of Bronson Alcott, (Little, Brown and Company)^[2]
• Golden Rose Award

Wikisource has original works by or about:
Odell Shepard

• A Lonely Flute. Houghton Mifflin Company. 1917. ISBN 9781437508536.
• The Harvest of a Quiet Eye: A Book of Digressions. Houghton Mifflin Company. 1927.
• Connecticut Past and Present. Alfred A. Knopf Inc. 1939.
• Shepard, Odell (1930). The Lore of the Unicorn. George Allen. ISBN 978-1-4375-0853-6. reprint 2008
• Shepard, Odell (1928). The Joys of Forgetting: A Book of Bagatelles. Ayer Publishing. ISBN 978-0-8369-1429-0. reprint 1969
• Shepard, Odell (1930). Thy Rod and Thy Creel. Globe Pequot. ISBN 978-0-8329-0364-9. reissue 1984