Lafayette Library presents Kim Bancroft, author of "Writing Themselves Into History"

Event date: 

Wednesday, March 29, 2023 - 2:00pm

Event address: 

Lafayette Library, Don Tatzin Community Hall
3491 Mt. Diablo Boulevard
Lafayette, CA 94549
Writing Themselves Into History cover
Kim Bancroft
LLLC Foundation logo

Lafayette Library & Learning Center Foundation

presents

Kim Bancroft

author of

Writing Themselves into History

 

Early California history vividly comes to life through the private journals and letters of two extraordinary women, Emily Ketchum and Matilda Griffing, the wives of author Kim Bancroft’s great-great-grandfather, historian and collector H. H. Bancroft.

In Writing Themselves into History, Kim Bancroft presents these women’s perceptive reflections on life in the still early days of California, paying special attention to their complex and nuanced portraits of gender, race, and class in the nineteenth-century West. 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.

Kim Bancroft is a longtime teacher turned editor and writer. In 2014, Kim edited H.H.Bancroft's 1890 autobiography, Literary Industries. She also wrote a biography of the founder of Heyday Books, called The Heyday of Malcolm Margolin: The Damn Good Times of a Fiercely Independent Publisher.

​Appearing in 19th century period dress and sharing slides from her book, Kim will also introduce her storytelling workshop “Legacy and Memory," facilitating conversations about how we can best utilize all the archives of our family and ourselves now tucked away in attics and basements. What options do we have for organizing, sorting, and presenting old letters and diaries, perhaps creating stories preserved for future generations?

REGISTER HERE

 

Writing Themselves Into History: Emily and Matilda Bancroft in Journals and Letters By Kim Bancroft Cover Image
$35.00
ISBN: 9781597145886
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Heyday Books - November 8th, 2022