Sharps and Flats was published posthumously by Charles Scribner’s Sons in 1900, compiled by Field’s friend Slason Thompson from the thousands of columns Field had written for the Chicago Daily News between 1883 and 1895. The title — “Sharps and Flats” was the name of Field’s daily column — suggests his range: sharp satire and flat-out comedy, literary acuity and genial buffoonery.
Field’s column was one of the first modern newspaper columns in the American sense — a daily personal essay that could range freely across any subject, written in a distinctive voice that readers came to know and love. He wrote about books (he was Chicago’s most influential literary critic), about politics (he was merciless to pomposity and corruption), about daily life in the city (he was a superb observer of urban manners), and about anything else that caught his attention. The column ran six days a week for twelve years — an output of extraordinary volume and surprising consistency of quality.
The selections in this volume represent Thompson’s judgment of the best — literary parodies, satirical sketches of Chicago society, humorous essays on book collecting and reading, tributes to dead friends, and occasional pieces of pure absurdist comedy that anticipate the humor of the early twentieth century. Field’s influence on the American newspaper column — on writers like Don Marquis, Ring Lardner, and eventually Mike Royko — is incalculable.
Collecting Sharps and Flats
First edition (Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1900): Two volumes, cloth binding.
Market values:
- First edition (two-volume set): $50–$125
- Later printings: $15–$35