Literary Industries: Chasing a Vanishing West

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 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 an extraordinary set of volumes sold throughout the country by his subscription agents. In 1890 Bancroft published an eight-hundred-page autobiography, aptly titled Literary Industries. Tins sprawling work sparkles with the exuberance of nineteenth-century California, abounds in anecdote and insight, and reveals a man of great complexity and wit. Recognizing that its length had put this classic out of reach to all but the most dedicated, editor Kim Bancroft created an abridged edition that introduces the modern reader to the remarkable person who was her great-great-grandfather. A foreword by the noted historian Kevin Starr and an afterword by former director of The Bancroft Library Charles B. Faulhaber give added context to the story of the man whose literary industries still provide the foundations upon which our understanding of California and the West have been built.