{"value"=>"<p>William B. Osgood Field was a passionate collector. He amassed large collections of rare books, coins, caricatures, stamps, crucifixes, and other objects. Although he belonged to a number of organizations dedicated to these interests, he was especially active in the Grolier Club. A member for forty years, 1904-1944, he served as the Club's president between 1924 and 1928. He served on committees, organized and loaned books for exhibits, donated books to the Club's library, gave lectures in his areas of expertise, and published small books for the members.</p> <p>While the subjects encompassed by Field's collecting were broad, he focused on a few artists and authors. He amassed an excellent collection of Rudyard Kipling first editions and organized a Kipling exhibit at the Grolier Club in 1929. Other highlights of his collections included books, manuscripts and prints by the cartoonists Edward Lear and John Leech. He published catalogs of his Lear and Leech collections in the 1930s and mounted public exhibitions of both at the E.P. Dutton book store in Manhattan.</p> <p>Field was a patron of the Lenox Library Association in Lenox, Mass. He donated books as well as his time, serving as Secretary of the Board of Managers in 1917-1918 and again from 1923-1928.</p> <p>This subseries includes correspondence with book and coin dealers, collecting clubs, research assistants, and publishers; invoices; inventories of his collections; typescripts and notes for his books; original Edward Lear and John Leech material; and dealer pamphlets and catalogues.</p>"}