Kate Field: The Many Lives of a Nineteenth-Century American Journalist (Writing American Women) - Hardcover

Scharnhorst, Gary

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0815608748 ISBN 13: 9780815608745

Publisher: Syracuse University Press, 2008

Synopsis

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.

About this title

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.

From Booklist:

Biographer Scharnhorst rediscovers one of America’s first celebrity journalists. With parents in show business and publishing, young Field came naturally to her calling, contributing pieces to the New Orleans Picayune at 17 and traveling to Italy to study voice two years later, “just in time to observe the opening volleys in the Italian Revolution and the Austro-Sardinian War.” This led to published war commentary in the BostonCourier, followed by dismissal for her apparent partisanship, “the first of her many conflicts with editors.” While abroad she met notable artists, including George Eliot in 1860, who proved that “genius has no sex.” Emboldened, Field went on to a stellar career, writing for the Boston Post, the Chicago Tribune, and the New York Herald and starting her own Kate Field’s Washington, an influential independent weekly. This first book-length biography of Field in more than a century reveals an important force in the history of women and the press, and with its meticulous research and lively writing, it is a notable addition to both fields. --Whitney Scott

About this edition

• Publisher: Syracuse University Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0815608748
• ISBN 13: 9780815608745
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 324