Edwin Wilkins Field (12 October 1804 – 30 July 1871) was a British lawyer and painter who committed much of his life to law reform.

Edwin, a descendant of Oliver Cromwell through his grandmother,[1] was the eldest of thirteen children of William Field and Mary Wilkins, of Leam, near Warwick.

He was educated at his father's school, and on 19 March 1821 was articled to the firm of Taylor & Roscoe, solicitors, of King's Bench Walk, Temple.

For some years after arriving in London he lived in the family of the junior partner, Robert Roscoe, to the influence of whose artistic tastes he attributed much of the pleasures of his later life.

The Joint Stock Companies Act 1848 substantially embodied the proposals contained in a draft bill laid before the legal adviser of the Board of Trade on 27 April 1846, by Field and his friend Rigge, who had formerly been in his office.

Lord Westbury's bill of 1865, on which Field was consulted, was not passed but the act of 1870 gave effect to his views so far as regards the option of contract.

A further memorial of the passing of the act was the building of University Hall, Gordon Square (opened 16 October 1849), towards which Field himself collected much money.

He taught it to working men, cultivated it in the "conversation society" founded at his residence, Squire's Mount, Hampstead, and pursued it in successive long vacations on the Thames, at Mill House, Cleve, near Goring-on-Thames, Oxfordshire.

Few things gratified him more than the token of regard presented to him in 1863 by his artist friends of the Old Water-colour Society, in the shape of a portfolio of their original drawings.

Edwin Wilkins Field drowned in the River Thames at Cleve on 30 July 1871 when his boat Yankee capsized while in company with Henry Ellwood, his old clerk.

On 4 August he was buried on the eastern side of Highgate Cemetery, in a family vault next to that of his friend Henry Crabb Robinson[2] and just to the right of the grave of George Eliot.