Exciting Stops Along the Way . . .

Once I had my list of American expatriate women writers in England, I set to work on a project outline.  At this point I thought I might continue through the 20th century and so I placed ads in journals such as The Author and The London American, requesting responses from writers who might be interested in participating in my study.  I received quite a number of answers!  So with the help of a small grant from the Independent Scholars' Association of the North Carolina Triangle, I went to London to study archival materials at the British Library Newspaper Collection and at the Fawcett Library, which housed the largest collection of materials related to the history of women in Britain; it is now called The Women's Library.  I also planned to meet indiviudally with about twenty women who were kind enough to offer me an interview -- journalists, poets, biographers, novelists, and translators.   Eventually I had a tremendous amount of information, in fact too much for one book.  I decided to focus on the Victorian period and concentrated first on Elizabeth Banks.  Because there was so little written about her, writing her story presented a real challenge.  I had enough, though, for a paper which I presented at a conference of the Southeast Modern Language Association conference in Atlanta, after which I was approached by a publisher's rep, who wanted to know if I had a book in the works!  From this initial contact came two opportunities:  the University Press of Florida first offered to reissue Banks's The Remaking of An American, with my introductory essay, and then to publish my longer study.  I already had compelted several chapters, but that interview of Banks in the magazine for young women still eluded me.  I had found letters, old newspaper articles, obscure magazines -- but not that one!