Eugene Field

Eugene Field was America's "poet of childhood" — by day a Chicago newspaper columnist whose "Sharps and Flats" column skewered politicians, by night the author of some of the gentlest lullabies in the language. "Wynken, Blynken, and Nod," his Dutch lullaby of three fishermen sailing a wooden shoe through a sea of stars, has been putting children to sleep since 1889.

"Little Boy Blue" — toy soldiers keeping faithful watch beside a bed their owner will never return to — was the great parlor tearjerker of the Gilded Age. Field himself died suddenly at 45, mourned by readers across the country.