Frank Dempster Sherman was born at Peekskill, New York, May 6, 1860. He entered Columbia University in 1879, where, after graduation and a subsequent instructorship, he was made adjunct professor in 1891 and Professor of Graphics in 1904. He held the latter position until his death, which occurred September 19, 1916.

Besides being a writer of airy lyrics and epigrammatic quatrains, Sherman was an enthusiastic genealogist and a designer (especially of book-plates) of no little skill. As a poet, his gift was essentially that of a writer of light verse—fragrant, fragile, yet seldom too sentimental or brittle. Pleasant is the name for it, a pleasantness perfumed with a pungent wit.

Sherman never wearied of the little lyric; even the titles of his volumes are instances of his penchant for the brief melody, for the sudden snatch of song: Madrigals and Catches (1887), Lyrics for a Lute (1890), Little-Folk Lyrics (1892), Lyrics of Joy (1904). A sumptuous collected edition of his poems was published, with an Introduction by Clinton Scollard, in 1917.