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James Fields Biography

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FIELDS, James Thomas (1817-81). An American author and publisher. He was born in Portsmouth, N. H., and was educated in the public schools of that place. In 1834 he removed to Boston, and in 1839 he became junior partner in the publishing firm of Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, in which he later became the controlling partner. His charming personal qualities, his sympathy, his liberality to all with whom he dealt, and his sound literary judgment drew to him most of the best-known American, authors of the time, and he became the publisher of Longfellow, Hawthorne, Emerson, Holmes, Whittier, and Lowell, besides introducing Tennyson and Browning to American readers even before their true worth was recognized in England. He edited the Atlantic Monthly from 1862 to 1870. The last 10 years of his life were spent in authorship and lecturing. His own published works include: Poems (1849; 2d ed., 1854); A Few Verses for a Few Friends (1858) Yesterdays with Authors (1872; 2d ed., 1900) In and Out of Doors with Charles Dickens (1876); Underbrush (1877), a volume of essays. He also edited, with Edwin P. Whipple, a Family Library of British Poetry (1878). Consult: Annie Adams Fields (his wife), Memoir of James T. Fields, by his Wife (Boston, 1881); also her Authors and Friends (ib., 1896)--Annie Adams (1834-1915), his wife, was born in Boston Mass. Her publications include: Asphodel (1866); Under the Olive (1880), a collection of verse; How to Help the Poor (1883); A Shelf of Old Books (1894); The Singing Shepherd, and Other Poems (1895),; the Life and Letters of Harriet Beecher Stowe (1897); Nathaniel Hawthorne (1899); Orpheus, a Masque (1900); Charles Dudley Warner (1904).

The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. VIII (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 532.