Kate Field

Biography

Kate Field became one of the most distinctive voices of 19th-century America, publishing essays, editing her own periodical, and acting on the stage while traveling the world to interview artists, inventors, and political figures. She wrote about everything from travel to theater with a bracing wit that made her reports feel as much like conversation as dispatches.

She used her platform to defend the arts, advocate for women’s participation in public life, and share lively accounts of her own journeys, winning admiration for her insistence that culture and civility belonged to every American.