Fields, James Thomas

Fields, James Thomas, 1817–81, American author and publisher, b. Portsmouth, N.H. He was the junior partner of Ticknor and Fields, noted Boston publishing house in the mid-19th cent. He edited (1861–70) the Atlantic Monthly with notable success. His books, largely reminiscences of literary friendships, include Yesterdays with Authors (1872), Hawthorne (1876), and In and Out of Doors with Charles Dickens (1876). He was aided in his work by his wife, Annie Adams Fields, 1834–1915, a native of Boston, who also became a well-known author. Besides writing volumes of verse and biographies of Whittier (1893) and Harriet Beecher Stowe (1897), she was famous for her literary salon in Boston.

See her journals, Memories of a Hostess (ed. by M. A. De Wolfe Howe, 1922).

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