Why am I doing this?

I suppose at some point I can go into all the reasons I have this deep affection for England and things English.  A natural outgrowth of a major in English literature?  A feeling of being "at home" the very first time I visited, right after college?  All those A.A. Milne books I read as a child (the real Pooh stories, not the Disneyfied pap, with the real illustrations, by Ernest Shepard). By the way, have you read Milne's poem "Disobedience"?  Absolutely terrifying -- and it's a poem for children!  Paddington Bear?  The Avengers?

Ah, but it probably goes back much further than that.  Let's blame Mom!  When I was small, my mother would try inventive ways to get me to drink my milk.  She would warm the milk, dissolve a spoon of honey in it, serve it in a cup and call it "English tea."  I was sold.

At any rate, I grew up as a little bookworm and my fondest hopes were to be teacher and to have a house or apartment with an entire wall covered in books.  I majored in English and went on to graduate school, taught, collected books . . . then took some time away from teaching English after my children were born.  My friend Miriam inspired me to act on a project I had been considering, and we and two other friends opened a small retail business in North Carolina.  When I bumped into one of my former high school students on the street and I mentioned having a small shop, he chuckled, "What kind of shop?  An English shop?"  Precisely.  We carried woollen scarves, travel guides, china teapots and mugs, tea cozies, antique prints, kilt pins, tea, preserves, Digestive biscuits, Marmite, Ribena, Ladybird books for children, toys and puzzles, tartan ties, Norfolk Lavender.  We had Thomas the Tank Engine before "Shining Time Station" popularized him on American TV!  Our customers, a number of whom were British transplants, advised us and requested additional items.  We developed a following.  Although we had a clever name -- "Westminster Alley," coined by Miriam -- many people referred to us simply as "the English shop."  We heard of a couple of Englishwomen, married to American military men, who drove up from Fayetteville, NC knowing only this term; they drove into town, rolled down their car windows, asked passers-by where "the English shop" was, and were sent right to us!

Running  a retail establishment was a terrific learning experience -- about the business world, about our community, about merchandising and marketing -- but the experience of the shop also solidified my Anglophilia.  I wasn't that interested in retail per se, and I did not want a jewelry shop or a clothing boutique or even a regular giftware store.  I wanted an English shop.  And we ran our business happily for a number of years, and were able to travel to trade fairs in the UK.

But I distract myself.  I am sure you are yearning to discover why I chose to write a book about American women in England in the 19th century, aren't you?  Patience.  More soon!

An American Girl in England

My girlhood years are long past -- and so were those of the writer who inspired the title of this blog, Elizabeth Banks. Elizabeth was a journalist at a time when just a few women were beginning to make inroads in the world of newspapers. Born in New Jersey and raised in Wisconsin Elizabeth was frustrated by the lack of opportunities women journalists had in the United States, and so she decided to take her skills to London, where she knew no one. That was in 1892. She created an identity for herself as "the American Girl," this phrase conveying both her outsider status and the optimism of youth. She continued to write as "the American Girl" for years, well into middle age, as a matter of fact.

Middle-aged myself, though don't pin me down to an exact number, I like to think that I have retained some sense of excitement in discovering new places, re-discovering old favorites, and meeting new people. I also admire people who are not afraid to be different and who can make bold decisions. In my life as a scholar and teacher, I have written about less popular, even unknown individuals because they fascinated me. I started with the Southern American poet Sidney Lanier. (Who? Look him up!) and then I discovered Elizabeth Banks and a number of other 19th-century American women who decided to pursue their lives and careers in England.

I spent ten years doing research and writing about them, and the result was a book published in 2006 by the University Press of Florida, titled American Women in Gilded Age London: Expatraites Rediscovered. Shortly I am traveling to England again, this time to speak about my book, and you can follow along via this blog.