June 6, 1834

This portrait, by John Singer Sargent, is of Annie Adams Fields (June 6, 1834 to January 5, 1915), a literary hostess, poet, philanthropist and biographer.Annie Adams had married James T. Fields, the publisher of Atlantic Monthly, and they were at the center of Boston literary life.





Annie Adams Fields: Woman of Letters (2002) is the title of a biography of our subject, written by Rita K. Gollin, Herein we find descriptions of the artist gatherings she organized for "persons interested in letters who will find it an advantage to be better acquainted"

Fields made notes about their witticisms---such as that they knew someone who had read Henry James in the original. And that Edith Wharton once, among writers, misunderstood a reference to reviving a black cat, as referring to a feline, not a magazine.

Fields did not use a lot of cat references. People that patronized Sargent always get some latitude.