“ FIELDS, JAMES THOMAS (1817–1881) , American publisher and author, was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on the 31st of December 1817. At the age of seventeen he went to Boston as clerk in a bookseller’s shop. Afterwards he wrote for the newspapers, and in 1835 he read an anniversary poem entitled “Commerce” before the Boston Mercantile Library Association. In 1839 he became junior partner in the publishing and bookselling firm known after 1846 as Ticknor & Fields, and after 1868 as Fields, Osgood & Company. ”