Field, Eugene (1850-1895), was a popular American author and journalist who is best known today as a writer of children’s literature. Many of his poems and stories are highly fanciful and sentimental. Field’s most famous works are probably “Wynken, Blynken, and Nod,” a whimsical lullaby; and “Little Boy Blue,” a poem about the death of a child.
Besides writing for children, Field worked as a newspaper columnist in Kansas City, Missouri, and in Denver, Colorado. In 1883, he moved to Chicago to write a humorous column called “Sharps and Flats” for the Chicago Daily News. Field’s writings influenced the development of humorous newspaper columns in the United States. They also introduced poetry and other literary material to thousands of poorly educated people who read newspapers.
Field was born on Sept. 2, 1850, in St. Louis, Missouri. He attended Williams College, Knox College, and the University of Missouri but never graduated.
Many of Field’s poems and stories for children were collected in A Little Book of Western Verse (1889), With Trumpet and Drum (1892), The Holy Cross and Other Tales (1893), and Lullaby-land, which was published in 1897, after his death on Nov. 4, 1895.
