Rachel Field

Below is a detailed, SEO-optimized biography of Rachel Field (September 19, 1894 – March 15, 1942), American novelist, poet, and children’s author.

Rachel Field – Life, Career, and Literary Legacy

Rachel Field (1894–1942) was an American novelist, poet, and author of children’s fiction, best known for Hitty, Her First Hundred Years. Her works won the Newbery Medal, a National Book Award, and continue to influence writers today.

Introduction

Rachel Lyman Field was a multifaceted American writer whose oeuvre spanned children’s fiction, poetry, drama, and adult novels. Her most celebrated work, Hitty, Her First Hundred Years (1929), earned her a Newbery Medal and established her as a significant voice in 20th-century American letters. Over her career, she produced bestsellers, lyrical poetry, dramatic works, and contributed lyrics for Disney’s Fantasia—all before her untimely death in 1942.

Field’s writing often displays close attention to place, history, and voice. Many of her stories are set in New England or the Maine coast, and she treated child readers with respect and literary care. Her life and work reflect the challenges faced by women writers of her era, the crossover between juvenile and adult audiences, and a restless creative ambition.

Early Life and Family

Rachel Field was born on September 19, 1894, in New York City, the youngest of five children of Matthew D. Field, a physician, and Lucy Atwater Field.

On her paternal side, she was part of a distinguished lineage: she was a descendant of David Dudley Field (a prominent New England clergyman and writer) and nephew to figures in law and public life.

Field later described herself as a late reader: she did not truly learn to read until about age ten. “A Winter Walk,” appeared in St. Nicholas Magazine when she was 16.

Field’s youth was also shaped by summers on the Maine coast; she fell under the spell of Maine’s “island-scattered” coastline as a teenager, an influence that recurs in her works.

Education and Formative Writing

Rachel Field attended Radcliffe College (as a “special student,” i.e. non-degree or part-time status) from around 1914 to 1918, where she studied under the renowned playwriting teacher George Pierce Baker.

One of her early successes was the play Rise Up, Jennie Smith (1918), which won the Drama League of America prize.

Her eclectic early training—poetry, drama, editorial work—laid the foundation for a career that would range across genres and audiences.

Literary Career & Major Works

Rachel Field’s writing career can be understood in three overlapping strands: children’s & juvenile fiction, poetry & drama, and adult novels & film adaptations.

Children’s & Juvenile Fiction

Field’s most enduring legacy lies in her works for young readers. Her belief that children deserve quality writing (not simplified prose) guided much of her work.

• Hitty, Her First Hundred Years (1929): This imaginative “autobiography” of a 100-year-old doll narrates its travels across continents and through time. It won the 1930 Newbery Medal, making Rachel Field the first woman to receive that honor.

• Calico Bush (1931): A historical novel set in Maine (1743), telling the story of a French orphan indentured to a New England family. It earned a Newbery Honor.

• Other children’s titles include Taxis and Toadstools, An Alphabet for Boys and Girls, Hepatica Hawks, Just Across the Street, Susanna B and William C.

• Posthumously, Prayer for a Child (1944), with illustrations by Elizabeth Orton Jones, won the Caldecott Medal (for the book's illustrations) and was later included in the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award list.

These works are notable not just for their imaginative premises, but for their sense of place (often Maine or New England), historical evocations, and respectful tone toward young readers.

Poetry & Drama

Field published poetry and one-act plays early in her career, often blending lyricism with simplicity:

• The Pointed People: Verses and Silhouettes (1924) and Six Plays (1924) were early offerings.

• Plays such as Cinderella Married, The Bad Penny, First Class Matter and To See Ourselves (co-written with her husband) reflect her engagement with drama across life stages.

• Her poem “Something Told the Wild Geese” (in Branches Green, 1934) became one of her better-known poems.

Though her dramatic works are less widely remembered today, they were part of a broader creative practice in which poetic sensibility and theatrical structure intersected.

Adult Novels & Adaptations

Later in her career, Field increasingly turned toward fiction for adult audiences, often infusing historical or romantic themes:

• Time Out of Mind (1935): Her first major adult novel; it earned a National Book Award (Most Distinguished Novel, 1935).

• All This and Heaven Too (1938): Based loosely on her great-aunt Henriette Deluzy-Desportes, the novel was adapted into a film starring Bette Davis and Charles Boyer in 1940.

• And Now Tomorrow (1942): Published the year of her death; it too was adapted for film.

• Minor adult works include To See Ourselves (1937) in collaboration with her husband.

Several of Field’s adult novels were turned into films after her death, underscoring their narrative appeal to broader audiences.

Her lyric writing also extended to English lyrics for “Ave Maria” (Schubert) as used in Disney’s Fantasia (1940).

Themes & Style

Rachel Field’s writing shares certain recurring traits:

1. Respect for the reader
   She strove not to oversimplify for children, believing that young readers could handle subtlety.

2. Strong sense of place
   New England landscapes, Maine islands, and coastal settings permeate her work. Her summers in Maine deeply informed her sensibility.

3. Historical imagination & voice
   Hitty is narrated from an object’s perspective across eras. Calico Bush recreates 18th-century life. Her adult novels also often dwell in past or transitional settings.

4. Lyricism and poetic grounding
   Even in her narratives, her control of imagery, metaphor, and phrasing reflect her poet’s ear.

5. Crossing boundaries between children’s and adult literature
   Unlike many authors who specialize, Field navigated both spheres, sometimes bringing thematic depth from adult fiction into her children’s work.

Her style is measured, emotionally grounded, and often melancholic in undertones—she engages with time, memory, loss, and endurance.

Later Life, Death & Legacy

In 1935, Rachel Field married Arthur S. Pederson, a literary agent. Hannah.

By the late 1930s, Field was drawn into Hollywood circles, negotiating film rights for her novels and engaging with the film adaptation process.

Tragically, on March 15, 1942, Rachel Field died in Los Angeles (at Good Samaritan Hospital) from pneumonia following an operation. She was 47. Stockbridge, Massachusetts, returning to her family’s New England roots.

Field’s reputation waned over time, but scholarship and public interest have revived her memory. In 2021, Robin Clifford Wood published The Field House: A Writer’s Life Lost and Found on an Island in Maine, a biography that both recovers Field’s life and explores her house in Maine.

Her works Hitty and Prayer for a Child have been selected for the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award list, indicating lasting recognition.

Selected Quotes

Rachel Field is less known for pithy public quotations, but several lines from her works and correspondence reflect her sensibility:

• From Hitty, Her First Hundred Years: (the doll reflecting on life) — “It is not what one endures, but how one bears it.” (paraphrase; illustrative of tone)

• Her poem “Something Told the Wild Geese” captures melancholy and direction:

  “Something told the wild geese / It was time to go…”

• In her reflections on children’s literature, she said she disliked “books written down to children, with the words so simplified that all the spirit is lost in commonplaces.”

These lines illustrate her lyrical, introspective voice and her respect for emotional truth.

Lessons from Rachel Field

1. Literary ambition across domains
   Field shows that one can write for children and adults without compartmentalizing, bringing poetic sensitivity into every genre.

2. Respecting younger readers
   Her insistence on not oversimplifying taught that child audiences deserve intellectual and emotional respect.

3. Rooting imagination in place
   Her deep connection to the Maine coastline and New England landscapes gave her writing depth and authenticity.

4. Persistence through rejection
   Field faced early editorial rejections, but continued to write and refine her voice until she found success.

5. The fragility and urgency of creative life
   Dying young, Field’s output reminds us of both the power and the brevity of an artist’s work—and how legacy often requires rediscovery.

Conclusion

Rachel Field remains a fascinating, under-appreciated figure in American letters. Her Hitty continues to enchant readers, and her adult novels once topped bestseller lists and became films. Her poetic sensibility, respect for young readers, and boundary-crossing career make her an instructive literary figure.