A two-stage sheet separating apparatus has a pair of corner separators and a top feed roller for initially separating a top sheet from a stack of sheets. A pair of retarding blades, one for each corner separator, are disposed downstream from the separators for finally separating the top sheet from any lower sheets which may have been carried along by inter-sheet frictional forces. The lower corners of the stack of sheets are supported by wedges in order to increase the beam strength of the sheets and thereby reduce the incidences where more than one sheet at a time is fed from the stack.