Yesterdays with Authors
Fields, James T., 1817-1881
English
We will print you a perfectly bound paperback of your selected title and send it to you at your nominated address
Below is a summary of Yesterdays with Authors
Yesterdays With Authors
By
James T. Fields
| James Fields at age 14 became a clerk in a bookstore in Boston, and in a few years became a junior partner in the bookselling firm of Ticknor, Reed and Fields. Fields's firm became the publisher for most of the great American writers of the Nineteenth Century. In this book, Fields tells how he persuaded a jobless, despondent Nathaniel Hawthorne to let him print "The Scarlet Letter." Fields made frequent visits to England, landing American publishingrights to the works of important British writers, includingthe great superstar of the time, Charles Dickens. Dickens acceptedFields as a personal friend, entertained him at his retreat, Gad's Hill,and wrote him many amusing notes that are included here. Fields alsosocialized with the cream of London literary society, and the bookincludes his personal anecdotes of meeting Wordsworth, Thackeray, andothers. He formed a friendship with Mary Russell Mitford (a successfuldramatist and novelist of the day; two of her works are available inreproduced here. The firm of Ticknor and Fields, after many mergers and acquisitions, continues to exist today as Houghton Mifflin Books. The firm's original store, the Old Corner Bookstore, still exists as a bookstore at the corner of School and Washington streets in Boston. |
James T. Fields (1817-1881).
Source: Chapters from a Life by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1896) |
CONTENTS.
I. INTRODUCTORY. II. THACKERAY. III. HAWTHORNE. IV. DICKENS. V. WORDSWORTH. VI. MISS MITFORD. VII. "BARRY CORNWALL" AND SOME OF HIS FRIENDS.
INTRODUCTORY.
"Some there are,
By their good works exalted, lofty minds
And meditative, authors of delight
And happiness, which to the end of time
Will live, and spread, and kindle."
WORDSWORTH.
I. INTRODUCTORY.
Surrounded by the portraits of those I have long counted my friends, Ilike to chat with the people about me concerning these pictures, mycompanions on the wall, and the men and women they represent. These aremy assembled guests, who dropped in years ago and stayed with me,without the form of invitation or demand on my time or thought. They aremy eloquent silent partners for life, and I trust they will dwell hereas long as I do. Some of them I have known intimately; several of themlived in other times; but they are all my friends and associates in acertain sense.
To converse with them and of them—
"When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past"—
is one of the delights of existence, and I am never tired of answeringquestions about them, or gossiping of my own free will as to theirevery-day life and manners.
Back