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Emily and Matilda Bancroft: Women Writers in Their Own Right

Author Kim Bancroft discusses her new book, Writing Themselves into History: Emily and Matilda Bancroft in Letters and Journals, and presents her work on two ancestors, the first and second wives of historian and collector extraordinaire Hubert Howe Bancroft. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area from the 1860s to the 1890s, Emily Ketchum Bancroft and Matilda Griffing Bancroft watched the unfolding of California history. Kim highlights Matilda’s significant involvement in Hubert Howe’s trailblazing research on the history of the American West and her evocative descriptions of travels throughout the Pacific Northwest and beyond.

Deeply perceptive chroniclers, these women left behind extensive records of their lives—including experiences with motherhood, illness, community events, and family business—set against the tumultuous backdrop of American social changes. Kim Bancroft pays special attention to the two women’s nuanced portraits of gender, race, and class in the nineteenth-century West.

Mar 21, 2023 05:30 PM in Pacific Time (US and Canada)