The Autobiography of a "Newspaper Girl"

Elizabeth L. Banks (1865 - 1938)

Elizabeth Banks was an American journalist and author. She grew up in Wisconsin, then lived in England the last forty years of her life. She became a regular contributor to English publications such as The Daily News, Punch, St James' Gazette, and London Illustrated. She created a sensation 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. Her later journalistic writings promoted women's right to vote and denounced prison conditions for jailed suffragettes. This memoir was written about 10 years into her career, when she was better known but was not financially secure.
Her public-facing accounts of her "undercover" work are related in Campaigns of Curiosity - Summary by TriciaG and Wikipedia

Genre(s): Biography & Autobiography, Memoirs

Language: English

Section Chapter Reader Time
Play 01 I Am Committed to the Charge of the Angels TriciaG
00:11:01
Play 02 The "Angels" and What They Were Like TriciaG
00:22:53
Play 03 I Go to Peru as a "Girl-Diplomat" TriciaG
00:26:51
Play 04 Into the Wide, Wide World of Journalism TriciaG
00:25:49
Play 05 In London Town TriciaG
00:20:49
Play 06 When I Began to Starve in London TriciaG
00:24:28
Play 07 I Become a Maidservant TriciaG
00:22:19
Play 08 When I Found Myself a "Heroine" TriciaG
00:26:14
Play 09 Why I Did Not Become a Salvation Army "Lassie" TriciaG
00:13:52
Play 10 A Deal in Ancestors TriciaG
00:27:44
Play 11 A Midnight Holocaust TriciaG
00:15:19
Play 12 On the Bringing Out of a First Book TriciaG
00:06:20
Play 13 An American Millionaire Hunts Me Up TriciaG
00:20:43
Play 14 The Departure of Dinah TriciaG
00:13:53
Play 15 Economy for Two TriciaG
00:26:05
Play 16 An Encounter with Mrs. Lynn Linton TriciaG
00:20:10
Play 17 Home Again, and in "The Way of Life" TriciaG
00:25:30
Play 18 Some Questions of Journalistic Ethics TriciaG
00:22:57
Play 19 "--And Have Not Charity" TriciaG
00:07:24
Play 20 "In the Name of Christ" TriciaG
00:22:21
Play 21 A Little Joyousness and Some Tragedy TriciaG
00:19:51
Play 22 The Love-Story of Miss Johnstone, Journalist TriciaG
00:23:15
Play 23 The Story of a "Failure" TriciaG
00:20:34
Play 24 Some Proposals and Some Love-Letters TriciaG
00:17:24
Play 25 An "Editorial Bouquet" TriciaG
00:21:11
Play 26 On Interviewing and Some Interviews TriciaG
00:23:09
Play 27 About My Enemies, and the Meanest Man I Ever Met TriciaG
00:17:39
Play 28 Looking Backward--and Forward TriciaG
00:19:20