- Kate Field
Kate Field (
October 1 ,1838 –May 19 ,1896 ), born Mary Katherine Keemle Field, was an American journalist, lecturer, and actress, of eccentric talent.She was born in St. Louis, Mo., the daughter of
Joseph M. Field , was educated inNew England and inEngland , and prolonged her stay inEurope as correspondent of various American newspapers, writing also for magazines. On her return she gave lectures and public readings and in 1874 appeared as Peg Woffington at Booth's Theatre, New York. She afterward abandoned the regularcomedy fordance ,song , andrecitation , but achieved no striking success. In 1882-83 she headed a Coöperative Dress Association in New York, which achieved a conspicuous failure. In 1889 she established "Kate Field's Washington ", a weekly journal published in the capital. After 1868 she published numerous volumes of miscellaneous contents, no longer noteworthy.Kate Field never married. In October 1860, while visiting his mother's home in
Florence, Italy , the celebrated British novelistAnthony Trollope met Kate. She became one of his closest friends and was the subject of Trollope's high esteem, as noted in his "Autobiography": "There is an American woman, of whom not to speak in a work purporting to [be] a memoir of my own life would be to omit all allusion to one of the chief pleasures which has graced my later years." Trollope scholars have speculated on the nature of their warm friendship. Twenty-four of his letters to Kate survive, at theBoston Public Library ; hers to Trollope do not.Kate Field died of
pneumonia in 1896.ources
* [http://www.wilkiecollins.demon.co.uk/wilkieletters/1875%2009%2010%20field.htm "Wilkie Collins - Letters"]
External links
* [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=990DE3DB153BEE33A25752C3A9639C94679ED7CF Obituary]
* [http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~business/bhcweb/publications/BEHprint/v021/p0074-p0083.pdf Kate Field]*NIE
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