The Remaking of an American

Covering her years as a pioneering American journalist in London and her trips to the United States in the early 20th century, the autobiography of Elizabeth Banks (1870-1939) provides rare insight into the professional career of a dedicated and talented woman and into the major political issues of the time: World War I, the suffrage movement, social class consciousness, and the effect of the great wave of immigration on the United States. Breaking into serious journalism when other women writers were relegated to the society and fashion pages, Banks was a regular contributor to the
Daily News ,
Punch ,
St. James Gazette ,
London Illustrated
and
Referee . She created a sensation in London by recording her observations on the plight of the lower classes, which she researched posing as a housemaid, street sweeper and Covent Garden flower girl. And in columns under the pseudonyms of
Mary Mortimer Maxwell
and
Enid , she unceasingly promoted women’s right to vote and denounced the prison conditions for jailed suffragettes. Banks’s memoir is full of personal and fascinating anecdotes about her neighbours George Bernard Shaw, John Galsworthy and Thomas Hardy; her friends H.G. Wells and suffragette Henrietta Marston; her meeting with Theodore Roosevelt; and daily life in London during the war. Although she never gave up American citizenship, Banks remained in England throughout her life, torn between the two countries and cultures that she loved passionately.