This last volume was printed by the Bancroft publishing establishment in San Francisco. The Bancrofts were an Ohio family of Mrs. Victor's early acquaintance, and Hubert Howe Bancroft laid before her his plan for writing the history of the Pacific Slope, and asked her to work on the part concerning Oregon. In 1878 she entered the Bancroft library, taking with her a mass of valuable material relating to Oregon history, which she had collected in the days when she intended to publish an Oregon history.
For eleven years, or until the completion of the Bancroft series, Mrs. Victor remained in this service. Here she did the crowning work of her life. At least six of the volumes which to-day pass as the works of Hubert Howe Bancroft were written by her. These are the "History of Oregon" in two volumes, the "History of Washington, Idaho, and Montana," the "History of Nevada, Colorado, and Wyoming," and the sixth and seventh volumes of the "History of California." These latter two volumes cover the political history of California, and were prepared at the special request of Mr. Bancroft, though out of her regular line of work, for the reason that he considered Mrs. Victor especially strong as a writer on political subjects. Parts of the Bancroft "History of the Northwest Coast" and numerous biographies throughout the series are also from her pen.
The style of writing in all of these histories is clear and vivid, for Mrs. Victor had that most enviable of gifts, the ability to put life into her writings. As a historian she was careful, painstaking and conscientious. Her judicial habit of thought is especially prominent, an attitude toward things which she inherited in common with her kinsman, Judge Walworth.
That her work was done well is fortunate for the people of seven Northwest states. Her histories of six of them were not only the first to be published, but the only
