Edward S. Allderdice was born in Havre, Mont., and attended the Fieldston School in Riverdale, N.Y., Prince of Wales Collegiate in St. John's, Newfoundland, and was graduated from the Cambridge School of Weston (Mass.) in 1974. He worked for the Chicago Review as a member of its poetry staff and for two years as art editor. In 1980 he received a BA in geography from the University of Chicago and he had been accepted in the master's program at Hayward State University in Hayward, Calif. He had been working at the Stanford University Map Collection and with his own prints and etchings.