Kate Field: The Many Lives of a Nineteenth-Century American Journalist

Kate Field was among the first celebrity journalists. A literary and cultural sensation, she reported the news while frequently becoming news herself because of her sharp wit and vibrant presence. She wrote for several prestigious newspapers, such as the Boston Post, Chicago Tribune, and New York Herald, as well her own Kate Field's Washington. Field's friends and professional acquaintances included Charles Dickens, Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Anthony Trollope, and George Eliot. Legendary novelist Henry James patterned the character of Henrietta Stackpole after her in The Portrait of a Lady.

In this eloquent and immensely readable biography, Gary Scharnhorst offers a fascinating, often poignant portrait of a fiercely intelligent and enormously independent woman who contributed significantly to America's intellectual and social life in the late nineteenth century. Kate Field was an outspoken advocate for the rights of black Americans and founder of the first woman's club in America. She campaigned to make Yosemite a national park and saved John Brown's Adirondack farm for the nation. The range of Field's activities should foster interest in her biography from students and scholars of nineteenth-century American literature, women's studies, journalism, and biography, and from both public and academic libraries.

Author: Gary Scharnhorst
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Published: 04/21/2008
Pages: 306
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.31lbs
Size: 9.19h x 6.37w x 1.00d
ISBN: 9780815608745

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 04/01/2008 pg. 91
Booklist 04/01/2008 pg. 17
New York Times Book Review 05/18/2008 pg. 17
Reference and Research Bk News 08/01/2008 pg. 303

About the Author
Gary Scharnhorst is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of New Mexico, editor of American Literary Realism, editor in alternating years of American Literary Scholarship, and the author of biographies of Horatio Alger, Jr., Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Bret Harte.