Songs and Other Verse was published posthumously by Charles Scribner’s Sons in 1896 and reveals a different Eugene Field than the children’s poet of popular memory. The collection gathers his adult verse: literary parodies (devastating takeoffs of Swinburne, Kipling, and Whitman), drinking songs and convivial verses, translations and imitations of Horace and other classical poets, satirical squibs aimed at Chicago politicians and literary pretenders, and longer narrative poems that show an ambition beyond the lyric.
Field’s skill as a parodist is particularly notable — his imitations are so precise in their capture of their targets’ mannerisms that they function simultaneously as criticism and homage. His Horatian translations bring an American informality to the Latin originals that anticipates the free-translation movement of the twentieth century. The drinking songs have a genuine Anacreontic warmth — Field enjoyed convivial company and good wine, and these poems celebrate both without apology.
The collection corrects the common misapprehension that Field was merely a sentimental children’s poet. He was in fact a versatile and technically accomplished writer of light verse in the tradition of W.S. Gilbert and Austin Dobson, capable of working in dozens of forms and registers. His early death at forty-five cut short a career that was still developing, and Songs and Other Verse suggests directions he might have explored had he lived longer.
Collecting Songs and Other Verse
First edition (Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1896): Cloth binding.
Market values:
- First edition: $30–$75
- Later printings: $10–$20