Literary Industries: Chasing a Vanishing West - Softcover

Bancroft, Hubert Howe

3.62

8 ratings by Goodreads

9781597142489: Literary Industries: Chasing a Vanishing West

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1597142484 ISBN 13: 9781597142489

Publisher: Heyday Books, 2014

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

Assembling the personal collection that became The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley

A bookseller in San Francisco during the gold rush, Hubert Howe Bancroft (1832 1918) rose to become the man who would define the early history of California and the West. Creating what he called a ''history factory,'' he assembled a vast library of over sixty thousand books, maps, letters, and documents; hired scribes to copy material in private hands; employed interviewers to capture the memories of early Spanish and Mexican settlers; and published multiple volumes sold throughout the country by his subscription agents. In 1890 he published an eight-hundred-page autobiography, aptly entitled Literary Industries.

Literary Industries sparkles with the exuberance of nineteenth century California and introduces us to a man of great complexity and wit. Edited for the modern reader and yet relating the history of the West as it was taking place and as it was being recorded Kim Bancroft's edition of Literary Industries is a joy to read.

From Literary Industries:
''It is a characteristic of some people that they are never satisfied except when they are a little miserable.''

''Men of genius usually are visionary dreamers; they are often as ingenuous as children, likewise as wayward and as petulant. No wonder women cannot endure them.''

''It is perhaps one of the severest trials of an author's life, first coming in contact with a publisher.''

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

From the Inside Flap:

A bookseller in San Francisco during the gold rush, Hubert Howe Bancroft (1832-1918) rose to become the man who would define the early history of California and the West. Creating what he called a "history factory," he assembled a vast library of over sixty thousand books, maps, letters, and documents; hired scribes to copy material in private hands; employed interviewers to capture the memories of early Spanish and Mexican settlers; and published multiple volumes sold throughout the country by his subscription agents. In 1890 he published an eight-hundred-page autobiography, aptly entitled Literary Industries. Literary Industries sparkles with the exuberance of nineteenth-century California and introduces us to a man of great complexity and wit. Edited for the modern reader and yet relating the history of the West as it was taking place--and as it was being recorded--Kim Bancroft's edition of Literary Industries is a joy to read.

About the Author:

Kim Bancroft is a longtime teacher turned editor and writer. She earned a B.A. in English from Stanford, an M.A. in English and a teaching credential from San Francisco State University, and a doctorate in education from UC Berkeley. She has taught at various high schools and community colleges in the Bay Area, at the Universidad de Guanajuato in Mexico, and at Sacramento State. Kim has edited several books, including Ariel: A Memoir by Ariel Parkinson; The Morning the Sun Went Down by Darryl Wilson; and Ruth's Journey: A Survivor's Memoir, by Ruth Glasberg Gold. She lives in Willits, California, in a redwood forest and enjoys the nouveau-Thoreau challenges and opportunities of life in a small cabin with a satellite dish on top. She is the great-great-granddaughter of Hubert Howe Bancroft.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.