Daniel Field (1938–2006)

"Dan Field was not only a historian but also what we used to call in our quaint, sexist way a "man of letters." ... He was an undergraduate English major at Harvard and the principal theater critic for the Harvard Crimson in the late 1950s. His critical acumen shifted away from the theater, but in his academic scholarship and teaching he was always a serious and exacting but almost invariably generous and helpful critic. He wrote a beautiful, slightly old-fashioned English—and it was an English English—nourished and disciplined by his wide reading. He had something of the wit of Evelyn Waugh, the curmudgeonly straightforwardness of Dr. Johnson, the honesty of George Orwell. He was a bit of a dandy out in the world, but a country squire in Vermont. Dan also had the Sitzfleisch that great historians have to have: a prosaic but absolutely necessary virtue. He mastered the sources, with great labor, but used them with discrimination, style, and imagination. He generally hid the enormous care with which he worked. The surface was clear enough to skate on and you had to plumb the depths only if you wanted to."