Overview

A window into the world of nineteenth-century California, from two women who experienced it firsthand. In the early years of California's statehood, Emily Brist Ketchum Bancroft (18341869) and Matilda Coley Griffing Bancroft (18481910) had front-row seats to the unfolding of the Golden State's history. The first and second wives of historian extraordinaire Hubert Howe Bancroft, these two women were deeply engaged members of society and perceptive chroniclers of their times, and they left behind extensive records of their lives and work. Writing Themselves into History offers a rich immersion in nineteenth-century California, detailing Emily's and Matilda's experiences with public life, motherhood, and business against the backdrop of San Francisco's high society and the state's growth amidst the tumult of the American Civil War. The book also highlights Matilda's significant involvement in Hubert Howe's trailblazing research on the history of the American West-including her work collecting oral histories from women members of the LDS Church-and her evocative descriptions of travels throughout the Pacific Northwest and beyond. Kim Bancroft's commentary offers historical context and points up Emily's and Matilda's keen insights, and she pays special attention to the two women's complex and nuanced portraits of gender, race, and class in the nineteenth-century West. This book is a valuable resource for American West and women's studies scholars, and for anyone with an interest in California's first decades as a state.

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9781597145886

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Kim Bancroft taught for three decades at high schools and universities before turning her teaching and editing skills to the creation of memoirs. She began with the work of her great-great-grandfather, historian of the Pacific West, Hubert Howe Bancroft, condensing his 1890 memoir into Literary Industries, published by Heyday in 2014. She also helped tell the story of Heyday's founder with The Heyday of Malcolm Margolin: The Damn Good Times of a Fiercely Independent Publisher, winner of the California Book Award. Her recent editing projects include Same School, Different Class: A Dual Memoir about School Integration, written with David Waddell and Priscilla Hunter: Building a Tribal Nation, written with Hunter (Pomo). Writing Themselves into History represents ten years of library research and gathering family stories from across California.

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