Although famous during her lifetime, Kate Field (1838-1896) subsequently slipped into such a state of obscurity that in 1964, when the St. LouisAmerican published a bicentennial article to honor one of the city's most distinguished daughters, the eulogy bore the title "Who Was Kate Field?" Carolyn Moss has collected correspondence ranging over more than fifty years to allow Field to answer that question herself. Field was acquainted with, among numerous others, George Eliot, Oscar Wilde, Julia Ward Howe, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, the Brownings, and the Trollopes. Outside the world of literature, she hobnobbed with such men and women as Harriet Hosmer, Horace Greeley, Gilbert and Sullivan, Stanley and Livingstone, and Alexander Graham Bell. That Field's contemporaries attached much importance to her correspondence is demonstrated by the fact that her letters were preserved and found their way into more than thirty archives. For those of us heading into the twenty-first century, the letters enrich our knowledge of Field's contemporaries and help illuminate an epoch. Taking a chronological approach, Moss has divided the correspondence into ten parts. Part 1 covers Field's St. Louis childhood, her days as a Boston schoolgirl, and her trip to Europe. Part 2 deals with her stay in Florence and her friendship with the Brownings, the Trollopes, and other literary visitors. In part 3, Field returns to America, where she achieves fame as a journalist, lecturer, and author. In part 4, she writes of her voyage to London and the grief and readjustment occasioned by the death of her mother. She becomes, in part 5, a playwright and actress, promotes Bell's telephone, and helps establish the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre. Part 6 finds Field founding the Ladies' Cooperative Dress Association. Part 7 deals with her campaign against the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints. In part 8, Field crosses America to promote Alaska and to lecture against prohibition. Part 9 contains Field's correspondence as owner and editor of Kate Field's Washington, and part 10 shows her final days. While Field's achievements are indeed impressive, Moss points out that the dauntless spirit of this voteless, unmarried, and at times destitute woman is more impressive still.

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.

This collection of original critical essays explores how women periodical editors in the long 19th century redefined women's identities and roles, and influenced public opinion about such issues as abolition and woman suffrage.

This volume profiles 60 American journalists from colonial times to the present and focuses on news reporters, editors, publishers, and broadcasters whose careers significantly advanced or were symbolic of major changes in their profession. Illustrations, fact boxes, and quotations from the subjects themselves, together with the depth and breadth of historical information, make this volume an illuminating and fascinating read.