1834–1881 She was born Ann West Adams in
Boston, Massachusetts, on June 9, 1834, the sixth of seven children of Zabdiel Boylston Adams and Sarah May Holland Adams. Among her siblings was her brother
Zabdiel Boylston Adams Jr. As a girl, she was enrolled at the School for Young Ladies in Boston operated by
George Barrell Emerson, where she was encouraged to read, learned Italian, developed an interest in self-expression, and came to appreciate nature. She married
James T. Fields on November 15, 1854, in
King's Chapel in Boston with a service conducted by Reverend
Ezra Stiles Gannett. Her husband was a well-established and respected publisher and with him she encouraged up and coming writers such as
Sarah Orne Jewett,
Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman, and
Emma Lazarus. She was equally at home with great and established figures including
Ralph Waldo Emerson and
Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose biography she compiled. At their home at 148
Charles Street in Boston, she established a regular literary salon where authors gathered. Fields and her husband became close personal friends with many of the authors with whom the publishing house worked, often hosting them at their home for dinner parties and overnight stays. In 1868, however, Fields's friend
Mary Abigail Dodge ("Gail Hamilton") became suspicious of poor treatment by Ticknor and Fields and believed she deserved a higher
royalty payment. James Fields initially ignored her complaints. Dodge abruptly ended her friendship with Annie Fields in February. A month later, Fields recorded her distress over the situation in her journal: "We do not forget to feel still the savagery... of Gail Hamilton... I really thought she cared for me! And now to find it was a pretense or a stepping-stone merely is something to shudder over. And all for a little of this world's poor money!" After months of dispute, Dodge anonymously published
A Battle of the Books in 1870 chronicling her negative experiences.
1881–1915 , published 1922 After Fields's husband died in 1881, she continued to occupy the center of Boston literary life. The hallmark of Fields's work is a sympathetic understanding of her friends, who happened to be the leading literary figures of her time. Her closest friend was Sarah Orne Jewett, a novelist and story writer whom her husband had published in
The Atlantic. Jewett paid a condolence visit to Annie Fields and Fields found solace in subsequent visits from Jewett. Jewett spent the winter of 1881–1882 with Fields at her Boston home. From then on, they shared their homes with one another for about half the year in
Manchester-by-the-Sea, MA, and the other half of the year at 148 Charles Street in
Boston. The English writer
Mary Cowden Clarke referred to Fields and Jewett as a "woman-couple" but they were more commonly referred to as having a "
Boston marriage." Jewett and Fields exchanged rings and vows, and on the one-year anniversary of their vows, Jewett wrote a poem, "Do You Remember, Darling," depicting her commitment to and love of Fields. The two also traveled together, including in 1882 when they visited Ireland, England, Norway, Belgium, France, Switzerland and Italy together. During the trip, Fields's networks allowed them to meet with European authors like
Charles Reade,
William Makepeace Thackeray, and the family of
Charles Dickens. They visited Europe again together in 1892, 1898, and 1900. After Jewett's death, Fields published her correspondence with Jewett in
Letters of Sarah Orne Jewett in 1911. Women in Boston marriages in the 19th century most often kept their correspondence private or destroyed it, so the survival and publication of Jewett and Fields' letters provides rare documentation of one of the most famous Boston marriages of the time. Though deeply personal passages were edited out after urging from their mutual friend
Mark Antony De Wolfe Howe leading some biographers to describe Jewett and Fields's relationship as a friendship, the correspondence depicts their deep love for each other. ==Legacy==