Photographed a year before her marriage to publisher James T. Fields, Annie Adams Fields was an author and social reformer who made her home the center of literary Boston. The Fields' circle of friends included authors published by her husband in The Atlantic Monthly, as well as European writers who visited Boston. In addition to her role as a literary hostess, Fields wrote biographical sketches and edited the letters of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Sarah Orne Jewett, and Celia Thaxter.