Al. G. (Alfred Griffith) Field

Best known as Al G. Field, Alfred Griffith Field was born in 1852 and became a prominent minstrel-show manager and performer in the United States. He is especially associated with Al G. Field Minstrels, a long-running troupe that toured widely and made his stage name well known.

Field also left behind a written record of that world. His book Watch Yourself Go By is a memoir of show business life, remembered for its lively stories and for the way it captures the culture, routines, and ambitions of traveling entertainment in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Today, his name survives both through that memoir and through historical interest in American popular theater. Readers coming to his work now often find it valuable as a period document: engaging, personal, and revealing about an entertainment tradition that shaped its time.