Literary industries
Subtitle: chasing a vanishing West
By: Hubert Howe Bancroft ; an abridged edition by Kim Bancroft ; foreword by Kevin Starr ; afterword by Charles B. Faulhaber
Contributors: Bancroft, Kim, editor
Publisher: Heyday
Published: 2013
Place of publication: Berkeley, California
Language: eng
Number of pages: 254
ISBN-13: 9781597142489
Subjects: Historians; Biography; Booksellers and bookselling; Book industries and trade
Other titles: Chasing a vanishing West
Description: "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" --
Notes: "This is an abridgement of Hubert Howe Bancroft's Literary Industries, first published in 1890 as volume 39 of The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft (The History Company: San Francisco, CA.)" -- Title page verso.

With a new subtitle and edited to focus on Bancroft's autobiography.

Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Preface by Kim Bancroft; title: The field; title: The atmosphere; title: Springs and little brooks; title: The country boy becomes a bookseller; title: Hail California! esto perpetua!; title: The house of H. H. Bancroft and Company; title: From bibliopolist to bibliophile; title: The library; title: Desperate attempts at great things; title: A literary workshop; title: Some of my assistants; title: My first book; title: The perils of publishing; title: A literary pilgrim; title: The two generals; title: Italian strategy; title: Alvarado; title: Close of the Cerruti-Vallejo campaign; title: Home; title: San Francisco archives; title: Historic researches in the South; title: Historic explorations northward; title: Further library detail; title: My method of writing history; title: Further ingatherings; title: Preliminary and supplemental volumes; title: Body and mind; title: Expeditions to Mexico; title: Toward the end; title: Burned out!; title: The History Company and The Bancroft Company.