FIELDS, James Thomas, publisher, born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, 31 December 1817 ; died in Boston, 24 April 1881. At the age of four years he lost his father. The lad was educated in a high school in his native place, and in 1834 went to Boston to be come clerk in a bookstore. In his eighteenth year he read the anniversary poem before the Boston mercantile library association. Soon after he reached the age of twenty-one he became a partner in the publishing firm of Ticknor, Reed & Fields, and continued a member of it till 1870, when he retired. From 1862 until 1870Mr. Fields was editor of the " Atlantic Monthly." Meanwhile he had lectured before the societies of Harvard and Dartmouth, and in 1867 received from the latter the degree of LL.D. his publishing career Fields lectured successfully, chiefly on literary subjects, throughout the large cities of the northern states. He had seen much of literary society, had been intimate with many eminent men, and possessed a special faculty of entertaining and instructing his audiences. He made four visits to European 1847, 1851, 1859, and 1869. His published volumes include "Poems" (Boston, 1849; 2d ed., Cambridge, 1854); "A few Verses for a few Friends" (Boston, 1858); "Yesterdays with Authors" (1872); "Hawthorne" (1876); and "In and out of Doors with Charles Dickens " (1876). In conjunction with Edwin P. Whipple he edited the " Family Library of English Poetry" (1877).His wife, Annie Adams, has published "Under the Olive," poems (Boston, 1880), several pamphlets, and a "Memoir of James T. Fields" (1881).