Eugene Field

Eugene Field (1850–1895) was born in St. Louis, Missouri, and worked as a journalist in St. Louis, Kansas City and Denver before settling in Chicago in 1883, where he wrote the widely syndicated column "Sharps and Flats" for the Chicago Daily News until his death. Known as the poet of childhood for verses such as "Little Boy Blue" and "Wynken, Blynken and Nod," he was also an enthusiastic and self-mocking book collector. The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac, drawn from his newspaper essays, was published in 1896, the year after his death; Field died before writing the closing chapter he had planned, and the book appears as he left it, introduced by his brother Roswell Martin Field.