Eugene Field

Eugene Field, Sr.
Eugene Field
Born	September 2, 1850(1850-09-02) St. Louis, Missouri
Died	November 4, 1895 (aged 45) Chicago, Illinois
Occupation	American writer
Children	Eugene Field, Jr.

Eugene Field, Sr. (September 2, 1850 – November 4, 1895) was an American writer, best known for his children's poetry and humorous essays.

Biography

Field was born in St. Louis, Missouri. After the death of his mother in 1856, he was raised by a cousin, Mary Field French, in Amherst, Massachusetts.^[1]

Field's father, attorney Martin Field, was famous for his representation of Dred Scott, the slave who sued for his freedom. Field filed the complaint in this famous case (Dred Scott vs. John Sandford [sic], referred to as the lawsuit that started the Civil War) on behalf of Scott in the federal court in St. Louis, Missouri.

Field attended Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. His father, Martin Field, died when Eugene was 19, and he subsequently dropped out of Williams after eight months. Next he went to Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, but dropped out after a year. Then he went to the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri, where his brother Roswell was also attending. He tried acting and studied law with little success. He then set off for a trip through Europe but returned to the United States six months later, penniless. Field then set to work as a journalist for the St. Joseph Gazette in Saint Joseph, Missouri, in 1875. That same year he married Julia Comstock, with whom he had eight children. For the rest of his life he arranged for all the money he earned to be sent to his wife, saying that he had no head for money himself.

Field soon rose to become city editor of the Gazette.

He became known for his light, humorous articles written in a gossipy style, some of which were reprinted by other newspapers around the country. It was during this time that he wrote the famous poem Lovers Lane about a street in St. Joseph, Missouri.

From 1876 through 1880 Field lived in St. Louis, first as an editorial writer for the Morning Journal and subsequently for the Times-Journal. After a brief stint as managing editor of the Kansas City Times, he worked for two years as editor of the Denver Tribune.^[2]

In 1883 Field moved to Chicago where he wrote a humorous newspaper column called Sharps and Flats for the Chicago Daily News.^[3] His home in Chicago was near the intersection of N. Clarendon and W. Hutchinson in the neighborhood now known as Buena Park.^[4]

He first started publishing poetry in 1879, when his poem "Christmas Treasures" appeared in A Little Book of Western Verse.^[5] Over a dozen volumes of poetry followed and he became well known for his light-hearted poems for children, perhaps the most famous of which is "Wynken, Blynken, and Nod." Field also published a number of short stories, including "The Holy Cross" and "Daniel and the Devil."

The Dinky Bird by Maxfield Parrish, an illustration from Poems of Childhood by Eugene Field

Field died in Chicago at the age of 45. He is buried at the Church of the Holy Comforter in Kenilworth, Illinois.^[6] His 1901 biography by S. Thompson states that he was originally buried in Graceland Cemetery in Chicago^[7], but his son-in-law, Senior Warden of the Church of the Holy Comforter, had him reinterred on March 7, 1926.^[8]

Legacy

Several of his poems were set to music with commercial success. Many of his works were accompanied by paintings from Maxfield Parrish. His former home in St. Louis is now a museum.^[9] A memorial to him, a statue of the "Dream Lady" from his poem, "Rock-a-by-Lady" (see lyrics, below), was erected in 1922 at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago. There is also a park and fieldhouse named in his honor in Chicago's Albany Park neighborhood.

Field has his own star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame.^[10] Numerous elementary schools throughout the Midwest are named for him, e.g. Eugene Field Elementary School in Wheeling, Illinois, Park Ridge, Illinois, St. Joseph, Missouri, Hannibal, Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, Manhattan, Kansas and Beaumont, Texas. There is also a Eugene Field Elementary School in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Littleton, Colorado, Tulsa, Oklahoma, Altus, Oklahoma, and San Diego, California. A dormitory in the Orchard Hill residential area at the University of Massachusetts Amherst also bears Field's name.

Field has been credited with one of the most devastating witticisms in the history of dramatic criticism. Reviewing an actor named Creston Clarke in the title role of King Lear, Field commented of Clarke's performance that he "played the king as if under momentary apprehension that somebody else was about to play the ace".

See also

• Nick Kenny
• O. O. McIntyre

References

External links

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Eugene Field

• The Duel The fairy tale, lushly illustrated in The Colorful Story Book of 1941.
• Works by Eugene Field at Project Gutenberg
• Ballad of Waller Lot (Buena Park, Chicago)
• Wynken, Blynken, and Nod, Knox College's children's and young adult literary publication
• The Duel, aka The Gingham Dog and The Calico Cat hear song version of the poem
• Works by or about Eugene Field in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Chicago: A Photographic Portrait, by Don Brown. Twin Lights Publishers (2005). Photograph of the "Dream Lady" sculpture.
• Eugene Field Collection at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin
• The Dinky Bird