Author, editor, hostess. Second wife of publisher James Thomas Fields. Born into a wealthy Boston family, Annie's parents believed in progressive education for young women. As a girl, she attended school in Boston under George B. Emerson, who particularly emphasized the classics and literature. She married James T. Fields, a successful publisher and occasional poet, in 1854. She was 20, he was 37. With her husband, she promoted the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and others. Her ability to host dinners and parties attended by well-known authors helped increase their loyalty to her husband's publishing house. She particularly encouraged women writers, including Harriet Beecher Stowe, Emma Lazarus, Sarah Wyman Whitman, and Sarah Orne Jewett, with whom she lived after the death of her husband until the end of her life. She published several books of poetry and compiled biographies, memoirs, and collected letters of several writers, including those of her husband, John Greenleaf Whittier, Celia Thaxter, Nathaniel Hawthorne, as well as Stowe and Jewett. Her own poetry was published in Under the Olives (1880) and The Singing Shepherd and Other Poems (1895). She was also a philanthropist and social reformer and authored the pamphlet How to Help the Poor, which sold 22,000 copies in two years. She founded the Holly Tree Inns, nonprofit inexpensive coffeehouses (the first was opened in Chicago), as well as the Lincoln Street Home, a safe residence for unmarried working women.
Author, editor, hostess. Second wife of publisher James Thomas Fields. Born into a wealthy Boston family, Annie's parents believed in progressive education for young women. As a girl, she attended school in Boston under George B. Emerson, who particularly emphasized the classics and literature. She married James T. Fields, a successful publisher and occasional poet, in 1854. She was 20, he was 37. With her husband, she promoted the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and others. Her ability to host dinners and parties attended by well-known authors helped increase their loyalty to her husband's publishing house. She particularly encouraged women writers, including Harriet Beecher Stowe, Emma Lazarus, Sarah Wyman Whitman, and Sarah Orne Jewett, with whom she lived after the death of her husband until the end of her life. She published several books of poetry and compiled biographies, memoirs, and collected letters of several writers, including those of her husband, John Greenleaf Whittier, Celia Thaxter, Nathaniel Hawthorne, as well as Stowe and Jewett. Her own poetry was published in Under the Olives (1880) and The Singing Shepherd and Other Poems (1895). She was also a philanthropist and social reformer and authored the pamphlet How to Help the Poor, which sold 22,000 copies in two years. She founded the Holly Tree Inns, nonprofit inexpensive coffeehouses (the first was opened in Chicago), as well as the Lincoln Street Home, a safe residence for unmarried working women.
Family Members
Sponsored by Ancestry
Advertisement
Advertisement
