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Research dossier · Arts & Letters

Field of Dreams

1989 film by Phil Alden Robinson

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 14, 2026
Entity authoritySource title only
Source-derived summary

Field of Dreams is a 1989 American sports magical realism drama film written and directed by Phil Alden Robinson, and based on Canadian novelist W. P. Kinsella's 1982 novel Shoeless Joe. The film stars Kevin Costner as a farmer who builds a baseball field in his cornfield that attracts the ghosts of baseball legends, including Shoeless Joe Jackson and the Chicago Black Sox. Amy Madigan, James Earl Jones, and Burt Lancaster also star.

Editorial summary

“Field of Dreams” enters the record as 1989 film by Phil Alden Robinson. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Field, Dreams and film can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA productive route into publication, performance and collection histories when the underlying object or edition remains clearly identified. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1989, 1982—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Field, Dreams and film.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Field of Dreams” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Field, Dreams and film provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 14, 2026. The first chronological checks are 1989 and 1982.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Field of Dreams”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Field of Dreams primary sources, Field of Dreams archive and Field research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Field of Dreams”?
  2. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
  3. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Field of Dreams” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.