Lullaby-land: Songs of Childhood

Eugene Field was born in Saint Louis, Missouri, September 2, 1850. He's an American writer, best known for poetry for children and for humorous essays. After the death of his mother he was raised by a cousin in Amherst, Massachusetts. Field briefly attended various colleges in Massachusetts and Missouri. He tried acting and studying law. He then set off for a trip through Europe only to return to the U.S. six months later penniless. Field then worked as a journalist for the Gazette in Saint Joseph, Missouri in 1875. The same year he married Julia Comstock. The couple had 8 children. Field soon rose to become city editor of the Gazette. From 1876 through 1880 Field lived in Saint Louis, where he was an editorial writer. He then took a job as managing editor of the Kansas City, Missouri Times, then from 1881 began two years as managing editor of the Tribune of Denver, Colorado. In 1883 he moved to Chicago, Illinois where he wrote a humorous newspaper column called Sharps & Flats for the Chicago Daily News. Field first started publishing poetry in 1879, when his book Christian Treasures appeared. Over a dozen more volumes followed, and he became well known for his light-hearted poems for children; perhaps the best known is "Wynken, Blynken, and Nod". Several of his poems were set to music with commercial success. Eugene Field died in Chicago at the age of 45. His former home in Saint Louis is now a museum. A memorial to him, a statue of the "Dream Lady" from his poem, "Rock-a-by-Lady" was erected in 1922 at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago. Kenneth Grahame was born in Edinburgh on March 3, 1859. When he was five years old, his mother died of scarlet fever and he nearly died himself, of the same disease. His father became an alcoholic and sent the children to Berkshire to live with relatives. They were later reunited with their father, but after a failed year, the children never heard from him again. Sometime later, one of his brothers died at the age of fifteen. He attended St. Edward's School as a child and intended to go on to Oxford University, but his relatives wanted him to go into banking. He worked in his uncle's office, in Westminster, for two years then went to work at the Bank of England as a clerk in 1879. He spent nearly thirty years there and became the Secretary of the Bank at the age of thirty-nine. He retired from the bank right before The Wind in the Willows was published in 1908. He wrote essays on topics that included smoking, walking and idleness. Many of the essays were published as the book Pagan Papers (1893) and the five orphan characters featured in the papers were developed into the books The Golden Age (1895) and Dream Days (1898). The Wind in the Willows (1908) was based on bedtime stories and letters to his son and it is where the characters Rat, Badger, Mole and Toad were created. In 1930, Milne's stage version was brought to another audience in Toad of Toad Hall. Grahame died on July 6, 1932.